In case you hadn’t heard, some guy named Barack Obama got sworn in as the new president today.

It was an exhilarating day for me as both a Canadian and an American, but I’ll leave the gushing to the usual pundits and go through some nitty-gritty about how the new administration is going to effect our business.

The most direct impact a new administration will have on our business is in the realm of credit. Anybody in the investment business knows that banks are keeping their purse strings cemented shut these days, and the bailout’s effect on loosening up credit has been shaky at best (And maybe you also heard that bank stocks didn’t have the greatest day today). Whether an Obama administration will do a better job at that obviously remains to be seen, but an economic team of the likes of Tim Geithner and Larry Summers makes the forecast a bit less cloudy. Quotes like the following from David Axelrod (The Obama version of Karl Rove) are comforting too:

“I think he’s going to have a strong message for the bankers. We want to see credit flowing again. We don’t want them to sit on any money that they get from taxpayers…we have to make sure that the money doesn’t go to excessive CEO pay and dividends when it should be going to lending…the point is to get credit flowing again, to businesses and to families across the country. That hasn’t happened with the expenditure of the first $350 billion“

We can look forward to being far more robust and diversified as a company if Obama can walk the walk about shaking credit loose again. Now, you would hope that anybody who surrounds himself with the likes of Paul Volcker understands the need to bash heads, but it’ll still remain to be seen if Obama can overcome that please-everybody nature of his.

Still, the first people Obama will be out to please are folks in the cities. I touched on this briefly in a previous post: Urban areas certainly trend Democratic, but the overwhelming amount of volunteering, fund-raising, and get out the vote effort that took place in American cities this last year rocketed Obama into office. Make no mistake, the cities put Obama in office and if he wants to come back for another term he will need to make sure he delivers on the promises he made to them. This is going to facilitate the urban in-fill effect, where the wealthy move into inner cities and the “slums” start moving out to the suburbs. Obama’s stimulus plan is big on fixing decaying infrastructure, and look for that to start with the U.S. cities that are bursting beyond capacity.

For example: In Portland, Oregon, where I live, there’s a bridge crossing the Willamette River that has a safety rating of 2 out of 100. The bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis a year and a half ago had a rating of 4 out of 100. It’s been that way for years, and no one’s done work on it. I’m lucky enough that I don’t drive during my daily commute, but I had to go by way of rush hour traffic yesterday at 4 PM to do an errand, and it took me half an hour to go five miles. And that was Martin Luther King Jr Day, a federal holiday.

It’s not an anomaly. Lots of American cities haven’t received an upgrade for decades. If Obama’s stimulus package goes through, it’s going to make us even more excited about investing in buildings in city cores that have experienced urban decay.

Another thing that’s gone largely under-the-radar in the economic discussion: National health care. Obama seems determined to institute a national health care plan in this next year, and if he succeeds, it will give American businesses a huge shot in the arm. It always puzzles me to why the business sector is so mute on this issue, because there’s no better way to free-fall your labor costs than to remove the burden of paying for health benefits. It’s Canada’s secret weapon to attracting businesses, soon it might be America’s not-so-secret weapon. As an aside, we’re also looking into cities like Cleveland where health care is a big part of the economy, as not only is it one of the three sectors not affected yet by the recession (the other two being education and government), but Obama’s plan to computerize medical records will help out the health care sector too.

All this will, of course, take a couple years and possibly longer, and in the short-term things could start looking worse. But that’s why we’re looking into buildings now. Some folks have been questioning the spring in our step, but the fact is that you don’t plant seeds for your garden in the middle of June.

Both Doug and I will have some more thoughts in the coming days on what the new administration is going to mean for us, especially as some real ground starts getting broken up in Washington over the next week. In the meantime, check out the video of Obama taking the oath of office sometime if you have a chance. It’s a hoot.