Greenspan:

"In all likelihood, employment will begin to increase more quickly before long as output continues to expand."

"I am fairly well convinced that employment is about to pick up -- I should be more explicit -- new hires are going to be picking up reasonably quickly if this economic growth rate continues."

"We have reason to be confident that new jobs will displace old jobs as they always have, but America's job turnover process will never be without pain for those caught on the downside of creative destruction."

"Attempting merely to preserve the comfortable features of the present, rather than reaching for new levels of prosperity, is a sure path to stagnation."

"Over the long sweep of American generations and waves of economic change, we simply have not experienced a net drain of jobs to advancing technology or to other nations."

"Although in recent years the proportion of our labor force made up of those with at least some college education has continued to grow, we appear, nonetheless, to be graduating too few skilled workers to address the apparent imbalance between the supply of such workers and the burgeoning demand for them."

"We are falling behind by any measure in our secondary schools."

Regarding Medicare

"We have to make some choices. All the choices are negative. It's not fair to those who will retire in the next generation to promise more than society can afford."

Well, Greenspan was pretty somber about the labor market. If you read all of his remarks, he sees a glass slightly full, but in danger of tipping over.

I don't buy the Medicare arguement. Yes, it's more of an issue than it was four years ago, but repealing Bush's tax cuts to the top few percentage of wage earners, and reining in military spending would go a long way toward steadying the fiscal ship of state.

It goes without saying that Iraqi style excursions must be shelved. Forever.

I too, am troubled by the lack of post-secondary education in the States. We are not even treading water here. We are going under.

Deficit spending is a bad idea in the best of times. As recent history has taught us, things can, and do turn around with remarkable speed.

I've filed Greenspan's remarks. I'll read them with much more focus later this eveining.