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Chicago seems to follow New York, and coming from New York and being in real estate, I worry about things happening in Chicago that have happened in New York. I've seen a great city like New York go downhill. It has a wonderful financial downtown, but the rest of the city is not very nice.

Chicago seems a big city instead of merely a large place.

That's great advertising when you can turn Chicago into a city you'd want to spend more than three hours in.

Money has stepped to the forefront of everything.

I come from Chicago, and the landscape of the Midwest has always meant a great deal to me.

There's a book out called 'How Money Walks' written by Travis Brown. He's followed annual adjusted gross income from 1992 to 2011. Approximately $100 billion has moved to Florida from all over the country. Number two is Arizona. Where does it come from? It's come from New York; it's come from New Jersey; and it's come from California.

Booming cities, and the provinces and states in which they are located, are driving forces in economic growth today. Consequently, they constitute the new frontier in America's international economic policy.

In our national mythology, we seem to include only one-way migrations to the great capitol cities. The journey from the small Wisconsin town or Minnesota city to Chicago or New York or Los Angeles. Certainly for some people, that journey is a round trip.

So that's why I said, if you look at the average, you would see the money New York got this year was in line with the average across the prior three years and substantially more, by a country mile, than the money given to any other city.