SLATE ... IN OTHER MAGAZINES

The cover story considers President Obama's inaugural speech—"resolute, suffused with sobriety, reflecting a tough-minded realism at home and abroad"—as an indicator of the strengths he brings to the White House. After a campaign of "speeches [filled] with gaseous oratory," the president's first order of business was to speak to "the nation as a community of mature adults." This bodes well, the author argues, for "the beginning of a whole new era of Obama-inspired and Obama-led citizen involvement." … Another article celebrates Obama's ability to "tap into changes in the culture and encourage them." Because "Obama represents a crossing of cultures," he is an embodiment of contemporary America. One indication that the president might add to cultural mixing is that "the kind of social media the Obama campaign used, like Facebook, also help people broaden their spheres and see how they are connected with people who are different from them."
Economist, Jan. 24
An article argues that President Obama's " 'Yes, We Can' coalition is already fraying at the edges." The author points to Obama's inaction (so far) on the Iraq war, the war on terror, the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and the Israel-Gaza conflict as ways in which the president has already "betrayed" his liberal supporters. … The cover story presents two ways to fix global finance: "[B]uy the worst assets at their market value and put them in a bad bank, [and] insure the healthy assets that remain against catastrophe." Governments should do both in order to prevent the world economy from sinking to the depths of the 1930s. After "[h]uge flows of capital into debtor nations like America and Britain pumped up asset markets" and caused the present crisis, a new world financial order must eventually become "smaller, better regulated, more conservative