Bringing back something akin to Glass-Steagall would clearly help limit risk in the system. And that's a very good and worthy goal. Letting banks sell securities and insurance products and services allowed them to grow too big too fast and fueled a culture that put profit and pay over prudence.

I have always looked at the world through the prism of money to some degree. If you could follow the money, it explains a lot of things, in all sorts of aspects of the world. You can look at politics through the prism of money. You can look at art through the prism of money. You can look at sports through the prism of money.

The Saft America plant, a giant 235,000-square-foot mass of concrete, is a modern marvel: its roof covered in row upon row of solar panels, embodying the renewable future that the batteries manufactured within are meant to sustain.

Since JPMorgan Chase announced its surprise $2 billion-and-growing trading loss, there have been renewed calls from economists, pundits, and politicians to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that prevented commercial banks from participating in investment banking activities.

One of Obama's first major acts as president was to sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and some of the money in that bill went to Saft.

I'm not a real sports guy, but I check ESPN.com just so I know what people are talking about.

Perhaps the biggest economic shift during Obama's presidency came from a piece of legislation that wasn't sold as such. On March 21, 2010, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. It was Obama's boldest piece of legislation and the one that will most likely define him.

Great stories are still just great yarns. News remains the best human drama ever. Technology is not changing the story; it is just changing the way in which we deliver it.

More and more smaller entities, such as Politico or TechCrunch, have been able to come out of nowhere and own entities. Dealbook, like them, now has an even greater opportunity, through additional resources, to drill down and offer even more breaking news and deep analysis of the issues that matter to our audience.

Whether a president can truly improve, or damage, an economy remains an open question.