In a little more than a few months the world has changed more than one can remember: A financial collapse with a slice of Wall Street gone. Impossible. A governmetn bailout of – would you believe- Wall Street. Paulson arguing that regulation is needed to stabilize the financial system. The global economy in recession, and it seems like it’s not the garden variety. It could be a depression. The election of the first African-American as President of the United States and an eoch changing shift in the electorate. The auto industry on the brink of bankrupcy. Birmingham, Alabama bankrupt. One does not know if we should buy on a rumor, sell on a hunch, or hunker down and hold. The markets are always looking forward and what they seem to be indicating is that we are now in for and have been in a bear market for most of the past decade. On average, these last 15 years or so we have a new administration that is likely to reside over a depression, bear market, major industrial bankrupcies. Welcome to the Global Economy.

Andrew Gelman tallies the big-county/ small-county; rich-county/poor-county votes.

A blogger shares perspective:

In short, I believe place, not just people, won this election for Barack Obama. And here’s why: cities are made up of three types of people.

1. Young people who migrate to them for college and professional opportunity.

2. Professionals who migrate to them for career advancements and financial gain.

3. Wealthy people who have gained enough money in their careers to stay in them over generations…

And credit the Obama campaign for doing such a good job of tailoring messages to this group. They’ve done a great job of making young urbanites feel good about those $25 political donations not to mention the volunteer numbers that come out of this group of voters. In a way, the Obama campaign emails make you feel like you’re not doing enough to make history if you didn’t at least volunteer on election day. And it’s worked like a charm in cities… Again, the Obama campaign – particularly in places like Philadelphia and D.C. – should get a lot of credit for being so well organized in cities, so much so that you would think he was running for mayor in places like Chicago and Raleigh, NC.

The critical feature of the creative economy is that it makes place the fundamental feature of politics, culture, and economics.

For a detailed look at the voting decisions made state by state, county by county, red to blue, this series of interactive maps from The Washington Post provides a 3-D version of the margin of victory in this presidential election and then some.

Any surprises?

Election map by county 3D

Election map by county

What a great day for the world! The election of Barack Obama has highlighted, once again, the exceptional nature of America’s cultural, economic, and political systems (see Lipset, De Tocqueville, and Weber).

While many will be celebrating for the foreseeable future, our President-elect is surely hard at work right now – he has already been challenged by Russia, as VP-elect Biden predicted a few weeks back.

The question is: what should an Obama administration do first? What should the first 100 days look like? Any ideas?

Via The Talent Show.

Swing states in yellow – Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Virgina, and Colorado among others. Sure, Obama has a structural lead going into it, but whoever swings the swings will win.