This is CBSI on the world.

I'm John Bastert.

Dallas, Texas.

I once traveled to Dallas, Texas, a good colleague of mine for a wedding.

Wonderful.

Everybody was greeting us as Yankees, and it was a treat to realize that downtown Dallas was open for business.

The cappuccino was excellent. This is many years ago in the 20th century.

I welcome Bud Weinstein, who is a Dallas denizen, who has guided me for energy for years when he was at SMU and also since then,

as he writes articles. But now we're speaking of his native Dallas. And the quote in the

economist I love best, when the sixth lane highway gets congested, we add a seventh. But a very

good day, too. This is wonderful. Dallas,

Texas. What has happened? Is this new, this spirit of Boomtown? It reminds me of the Yukon

meets the Oklahoma gushers. Good evening to you. Hi, John. First, a correction. I am not a Dallas native. I'm a naturalized Texan.

We moved here from New York 50 years ago.

Back then, the metropolitan area of Dallas had about 3 million people. It's now pushing 8 million.

So this didn't just start. The economists didn't just discover the boom in Texas and especially in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

This has been going on for at least 50 years.

But I think the factors that made Dallas attractive to me 50 years ago as a place to live and work are still here today. And there

are lots of positives. You were talking about the friendliness of the people. It's a very open

place. I mean, we didn't know anybody here. And yet we've had a very comfortable life and made

lots of friends and lots of contacts

in the business community for me. So I found us to be a very open society where it's easy

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