What will Barack Obama's sweeping victory mean for the U.S. economy? Here are a few guesses.

First, the president-elect meant it when he promised to redistribute income from families earning more than $250,000 per year to those earning $50,000 or less. Taxes on the richer families will go up to fund checks that will be mailed to the lower earners who now pay no income taxes (though they do pay Social Security taxes).

The worry is that congressional Democrats will persuade the new president to lower the $250,000 cut-off point to the $150,000 his vice president in waiting, Joe Biden, favors. Some of Obama's advisers are passing the word that he will hold the line at $250,000 and, moreover, won't risk exacerbating the recession by upsetting the wealth-creating small business sector with an immediate tax increase. Instead, he will simply allow the Bush tax cuts to expire at the end of 2010, returning taxes on high earners to the levels prevailing during the Clinton years. So, too, with inheritance taxes: They will go up in 2010 to something like the pre-Bush levels, perhaps with a bit more forgiveness for those passing on modest inheritances or small businesses. In the end, it will cost high earners more to live and more to die in 2011. Plan accordingly.

But taxes are only one area of concern to the business community. The supposedly conservative Bush administration has handed Obama significant control over the commanding heights of the economy. The new president inherits ownership of parts of most major banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions, and has the funds needed to extend government ownership into other sectors of the economy. There is little doubt that he will use that control to restrict executive salaries, direct funds to homeowners behind in their mortgage payments, pressure banks to lend to constituencies he and his congressional allies deem worthy, and otherwise exercise more control over the allocation of the nation's capital resources than any of his predecessors was able to do, with the exception of Franklin Roosevelt during World War II.

Won't President Obama be constrained by the huge budget deficits he will face? Not entirely. Many items on his wish list don't require the direct expenditure of government money. A more-than-willing Congress will enable him to redeem his pledge to the trade unions to push through legislation to eliminate the secret ballot in union-recognition elections. The Environmental Protection Agency probably does not need new legislation to change the rules on carbon emissions so that Obama can achieve his goal of making new coal-fired generation plants totally uneconomic. The Federal Communications Commission can impose so-called "fairness" rules that make it more difficult for the largely conservative talk radio stations to challenge his government's policies. The Food and Drug Administration can make it difficult if not impossible for pharmaceutical companies to gain permission to market new drugs that the industry's critics contend are "merely" improvements on existing drugs, or are not sufficiently efficacious in the eyes of regulators. In short, Obama can obtain large portions of his agenda without asking Congress for new funding.

Certain sectors are most likely to see major changes. Housing will be the first in line. The government has placed the two giant mortgage writers, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, in "conservatorship." There is general agreement that the hybrid structure of the past--with private shareholders, but an implicit government guarantee of Freddie and Fannie's debt, in return for encouraging home ownership among lower earners--is dysfunctional. There is no chance that Obama will try to privatize these organizations, which back something like three out of every four mortgages written in America. Even Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke, not exactly a raving socialist, says there is a role for government to play in the mortgage and housing markets. Best guess is that Freddie and Fannie will be revived in some form, with a specific mandate to do more of what caused much of the mess we are now in--make loans to potential homeowners who will have difficulty meeting even the generous mortgage terms that will be on offer.