If you hadn’t already noticed, we did something different with this issue’s cover. We typically pick one story for cover treatment. But this time, we picked a topic — the global financial crisis — to highlight five related stories. Why the change? The answer is straightforward. Our faculty and alumni had a lot to say about the crisis from a variety of perspectives. We didn’t want to single out any one article when, in our view, they are all important.

As is often the case, solving one problem created another: How to make one cover illustration serve a collection of stories? We looked for a common thread among them and found one in the search for solutions. In fact, by early this year, the national conversation clearly had shifted from discovery to recovery, with Washington taking a commanding role in charting a hoped-for economic turnaround.

As we went to press, President Obama’s ambitious $825 billion economic stimulus package was working its way through Congress. The rapidly deteriorating jobs picture heightened the sense of urgency to act. Employers shed more jobs in 2008 than in any year since 1945.

Against this backdrop, our art director, John Sizing, contacted illustrator Stuart Bradford and challenged him to come up with an appropriate cover image. We think he nailed it. Fissures running through the iconic dollar sign depict an economy badly in need of repair. The image sets the stage for the eclectic set of articles we assembled that touch on our economic crisis.

• In order of appearance, they begin with an overview of the big impact the crisis has already had on HBS cases, courses, and faculty research. see article
• Challenge magazine editor Jeff Madrick’s (MBA ’71) new book, The Case for Big Government, upends a generation of reigning political orthodoxy that viewed government as the problem, not the solution. see article
• AFL-CIO associate general counsel Damon Silvers (MBA ’95) sees the future of the American middle class as closely linked to a controversial legislative agenda to revive the labor movement. He’s also a critic of the government’s $700 billion financial bailout program. see article
• America’s financial future is more closely intertwined with China’s than most people recognize, argues HBS professor Niall Ferguson in an excerpt from his new book, The Ascent of Money. In a Q&A, he predicts that Washington’s well-meaning attempts to rescue Detroit from imminent bankruptcy will be futile. see article
• HBS professor Peter Tufano makes the case for allowing Americans to automatically buy U.S. savings bonds with their tax refunds, building family and national savings in a time of financial crisis. see article

I hope you find this collection of articles as interesting and thought-provoking as we did. Take a moment to share your views. Write us at bulletin@hbs.edu.

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