Boston's Mayor Tries to Stem Massive Job Losses

The Boston Globe reports:

Mayor Thomas M. Menino has led a series of meetings with some of the city's A-list business leaders to figure out how to retain and increase employment in the wake of high-profile takeovers of Boston companies and significant relocations by others.

During a session this month at the Parkman House, Menino's business residence on Beacon Hill, the group filled six easels with ideas about how to attract and keep more jobs, such as an advertising campaign extolling Boston's business advantages, said Marsh Carter, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and former chief executive of Boston's State Street Corp. Among others attending that meeting were David D'Alessandro, former chief executive of John Hancock Financial Services Inc., and real estate developer Joseph F. Fallon, head of Fallon Co.

''The most important thing to do is figure out to how to attract jobs and businesses today," Menino said.

A catalyst for the effort was Fidelity Investment's disclosure in January that it plans to move as many as 1,500 workers out of Massachusetts by 2008, partly because of alluring tax benefits in Rhode Island. Hundreds of those people now work in downtown Boston, which is already reeling from moves like the 900 jobs that Teradyne Inc. will shift to North Reading and the 1,100 jobs in Downtown Crossing to be shed because of the closing of Filene by Federated Department Stores Inc. as part of a merger.

Job losses,population decline,and yet no meltdown in real estate in Boston.You'd think that eventually fundamentals would have to work.