he and alan blinder did a report on stimulus and government intervention, tarp included in that, and they have found that the government intervention did help the economy. so they will -- we will talk to him about that. we will talk about tax cuts as well. that is at 7:45 a.m. this morning. at 8:30 we will turn our attention to public housing, we will talk to sandra henriquez, with housing and urban development program, assistant secretary for public and indian housing. we will wrap up the program with our health care series, the beginning of all health care series. 9:15 a.m., tracy what, senior health care consultant with mercer, she will talk about how the health care law is being implemented. it is an issue we are going to be focusing on all this week. today we are taking all our health care series talking about that. on tuesday we will have a discussion on how the -- excuse me, that today's discussion. on tuesday we will talk about how the law changes health insurance and what changes you will see now and in the future. on wednesday, individual mandate and what new rules are in p

the real question is does he have the tools to do what it takes and this week alan blinder who used tork at the fed had a piece on "the wall street journal" where he was saying the fed is running low on ammunition and the ammunition that it does have is the weak stuff. i mean he's saying at the height of the financial crisis the fed was using things like machine guns and hand grenades and now they're fighting with swords and throwing rocks and, you know, even the fed is -- bernanke is saying that there are options, but, you know, don't count on us the fed alone, the central bankers to solve the world's problems. it seems like he was hinting that maybe ultimately the washington is going to have to step. >> exactly right. the fed is essentially played its hand. interest rates are as low as essentially they can go so we can't look to the fed to get us out of it. i also don't think, by the way, we can look to stimulus to get us out of it. we had one. it didn't have the effect people wanted plus at a time of budget deficits i don't think we'll get a stimulus that will be large and focused e

stimulus that we pursued an economic recovery plan that i think mark's own paper describes along with alan blinder, the former vice chair of the fed, as having had a significant impact on ensuring that the depth of our recession didn't reach a great depression. >> do you agree then with mark zandi, who said the tax cuts shouldn't be allowed to expire in the middle of a recession? >> the president believes that we should not raise taxes on the middle class. >> he says across the board. >> right. the president believes that adding $700 billion to our deficit for tax cuts for those making in excess of $250,000 a year doesn't make sense. >> so is zandi wrong about that? >> that includes businesses. >> we disagree with him on that. >> and that includes businesses though, robert, it's not just individuals, right? >> well, understand that, again, this is the debate we had during the campaign in which we now know which way the participants line up. the number -- you'll hear this a lot during this debate -- "you're going to raise taxes o"" -- >> small business. >> right. just as we said during the campaign

we'll just received a report from the economists alan blinder and mark zandi entitled, "how we ended the great recession." they say in part, "we find that its effects on real gdp, jobs, and inflation are huge, and probably averted what could have been called great depression 2. zero. we estimate that without the government response, gdp in 2010 would be about 6.5% lower, payroll employment would be less by some 8.5 million jobs, and the nation would now be experiencing deflation. when all is said and done, the financial and fiscal policies will of cost taxpayers a substantial sum, but not nearly as much as most had feared, and not nearly as much as if policymakers had not acted at all. the comprehensive wrought -- if the comprehensive policy responses saved the economy from another depression, as we estimate, they were well worth their cost." . we can now look back at their economic report -- performance. the fourth quarter of 2008 was a negative 6.8%. in the most recent quarter, the second quarter of 2010, 2.4%. but you can see in the fourth quarter of 2009, it is 5%. so we are seei