Barton Smith Quotations

The professional, the high-skilled person is going to find it easiest to be able to find work in Houston.

I think it's almost guaranteed that those who stay will be those with the least economic opportunity the people who don't have anyplace else to go.

I think businesses are going to open up jobs they may not have otherwise done.

Whoever it was, they made some very quick, good, obvious decisions, generous decisions.

The problem is coordinating it so we don't all work at home on Fridays.

But the more interesting question is not how many are going to stay here, but who's going to stay.

Disasters like this have tended to rebound the economy simply because of the massive recovery efforts. It's going to involve an enormous amount of expenditure.

This is a different Houston economy than it was 25 years ago.

It's not in our interests to grow too fast.

Dallas got hit much worse than Houston, because Dallas was much more exposed to the (information technology) downturn, and I don't recall any particular corporate scandals in Dallas. The scandal for Dallas was the high-tech bubble.

The notion that income inequality has gotten worse in the United States in the last 20 years ? I believe that. The idea that it is worse in Texas than in other places ? I don't know that I believe that.

After that, as energy growth slows, it will all depend on the health of the national economy and that, in turn, will largely depend upon the fate of the housing market.

The Houston economy has not been booming. It's been growing, but gradually.

A huge section of the U.S. economy is down. It's as complicated as the rescue efforts in New Orleans; it's all these different pieces. You have to get electricity restored, find out where your employees are; it's almost a mind-boggling exercise.