What Do You Think About Alan Greenspan's Comment About Jobs?

Alan Greenspan said yesterday that the U.S. economy is flexible enough to replace jobs that were lost in the last recession.

The Federal Reserve chairman said that laid-off workers may need to be retrained to qualify for new work, however.

Greenspan's comments came in a speech prepared for an economic conference in London. The central banker addressed fears that many of the 2.8 million manufacturing jobs lost in the past three and a-half years could be gone forever to lower wage countries. He said competition from low-wage countries was not a new development. He said that in the 1950s and 1960s, there was concern that American jobs were migrating to Japan and then Mexico.

Greenspan's comments came a day before the Federal Reserve begins a two-day policy-setting session in Washington. He made no mention of monetary policy.

My question is: "Is flexibility the real issue here?" Businesses will create jobs where the greatest economic advantage exists for them. Can we offer a sufficient economic advantage to retain and grow the "productive" jobs in our economy? That seems to me to be the right question.