Prices for mansions in Houston’s swankiest neighborhood have tumbled in lock step with crude prices. The Houston Opera has offered free season tickets to patrons who lost their jobs in the oil bust. A fancy restaurant offers cut-price dinners. Twenty months into the worst oil price crash since the 1980s, well-heeled residents of the world’s oil capital are among the hardest hit largely because tanking energy firm shares make up much of oil and gas executives’ compensation.

http://fortune.com/2016/02/25/houston-oil-rout/

I was working for a US oilfield service company in China in the early 1980's when the last oil crash hit, taking my quarterly leave rotation in sunny Pattaya and banking like a Rothschild. We were never close to being unemployed but the guys returning from their Houston home leave told stories of soup kitchens, bankruptcies, divorces and suicides. Happy to see that Houston has a lot more resilience through diversity these days but how long can that last?

Long enough for me to take a trip back to my former home and see if I can get a River Oaks bargain I hope.