Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/presidential-aide-rove-to-exit-federal-reserve-takes-action Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove announced his resignation, while the Federal Reserve took its most decisive action yet to help an uncertain economy. Political analysts David Brooks and Harold Meyerson discuss the week's top stories. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, the analysis of Brooks and Meyerson, New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, also the executive editor of the American Prospect magazine. Mark Shields is off tonight.David, what's your reaction to what the Federal Reserve did today? DAVID BROOKS, Columnist, New York Times: Well, the Brooks Foundation is in better shape than it was yesterday. It's not quite up to the Gates Foundation, but… JIM LEHRER: How about your mortgages? DAVID BROOKS: My mortgages, I think they're fine. JIM LEHRER: Oh, good. DAVID BROOKS: No, I think once the markets go haywire, to start punishing the healthy/unhealthy alike, it seems rational they would take — the Fed would take some interest in this and do what they did.I would just say politically — and we've all been curious about whether it will have political ramifications — I spent the week in Iowa going to a bunch of Democratic rallies one after the other, and I probably heard 100 questions asked of candidates. Not a single one had to do with any of this. I didn't hear any talk of any of this.So maybe this will have spillover effects; it certainly will, if there's a recession. But I would say, based on that sample, so far it hasn't had spillover effects in the political world. JIM LEHRER: Harold, what do you think of what happened today and David's point about the economy generally? HAROLD MEYERSON, The American Prospect: The Fed had to do what the Fed had to do today, because liquidity was just drying up and loans simply weren't being made. That said, there's a downside to this, which is you end up rewarding the bad behavior that gets you into this trouble in the first place.And I think, as my American Prospect colleague Bob Kuttner often says, you need to establish some real regulations, something that's beyond the Fed, something that's the work of the Congress and the administration, on what all these lending institutions can do.That said, if a recession doesn't happen, I think this is not a major event, but we're far from out of the woods. There are 2 million mortgages that are up for readjustment this fall. We could see people losing their homes in large numbers. We're at the highest volume of unsold houses in about 15 years.So, unfortunately, this may just be act one. And if we get in a real act two and act three, then you will be getting more questions out in Iowa, I think.