An Obama presidency and the business news desk

Editor’s Note: Talking Biz News asked Bloomberg News personal finance columnist John Wasik, the author of “The Merchant of Power” and 11 other books, to write about how a Barack Obama presidency might affect business news coverage, and stories that business journalists should be exploring. His response is below:

When I met President-elect Barack Obama twice during his Senate campaign almost three years ago, a voice resounded in my head: “This man can become president. He has the complete package.”

At the time, and in many speeches thereafter, Obama echoed Lincoln when the 16th president spoke of his central idea of equality “the principle that clears the path for all –- gives hope to all –- and, by consequence, enterprise, and industry.'”

By elucidating this concept of economic equality, I saw something in Obama that had a powerful resonance. In an America where middle class wages are falling behind inflation, pensions are being cut, health care not available to some 40 million and retirement security fractured by numerous market crashes, he reached into the core of the troubled American economic experience.

The tasks that he must confront are Herculean. Will Obama be able to replace the nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs that have been lost since 2000? Or repair the disemboweled financial and housing markets? Like all presidents, he may not have that much direct impact. It took World War II to re-engage the U.S. economy after a decade of FDR’s New Deal programs.

Fortunately, Obama is a uniquely qualified expert on economic violence. When he was a community organizer on the South Side –- something he was ridiculed for during the Republican convention — he was trying to restore a measure of dignity to tens of thousands of steel and other manufacturing workers who were impoverished by the brutal recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

We could want for no greater authority on how neighborhoods and families suffer during a recession than Barack Obama.

I know of his work because I walked those streets when I was writing about the same people who had gone from decent wages and guaranteed benefits to poverty nearly overnight. Their ranks are legion: Men like Frank Lumpkin, a bare-fisted boxer who came from a Georgia sharecropping family to a decent job in a steel mill, only to end up being a jobless coalition organizer when his mill closed in 1980.

Obama may not be able to boost incomes, restore sanity to financial markets, nor even make health care affordable and available to all, yet he will provide a new agenda and a stolid will for tackling these problems. At least he has a plan and has the desire to transact change.

The country needs nothing less than a reckoning of the vast damage done by three bubbles in a decade followed by a rebirth. Fortunately, it has always possessed this genius for invention and re-invention. It’s been a Valhalla for second chances.

It’s no small irony that Obama will be inaugurated during the bi-centennial of both Lincoln and Darwin. America is still on the tortured road to equality and evolves to seek the angels of our better nature. So goes the audacity of hope.

What business journalists should be focusing on post-election:

* How will the Obama administration and Congress address investor protection issues? It’s clear that the SEC, Fed and Treasury failed miserably in protecting investors from three bubbles and the aftermath. Will a superregulator be created? How will individual investors gain some protection?

* The retirement crisis was exacerbated by the market meltdown. Every 401(k) plan was hurt. Should the 401(k) be replaced? How can the new administration bolster retirement security?

* What’s the long-range stimulus plan? Mailing checks to taxpayers won’t be enough. What will the administration do to shut down foreclosures and modify mortgages? How will communities and states be hurt if the foreclosure crisis doesn’t wind down soon? What kinds of services will be cut? How will local businesses be hurt if the housing markets remain sour?

* How will the opaque world of derivatives be monitored and regulated to give the markets circuit breakers on systemic risk (major meltdowns)?

* Which companies will benefit from Obama’s proposed $150 billion energy program? Will it truly promote energy independence and create jobs?

* How will Obama’s tax plans stimulate the economy and businesses? Will his incremental approach to health care accessibility make a difference in stemming health care costs and insurance industry gouging?