| MONDAY 19 JANUARY 22:30 GMT - BBC TWO PRESENTED BY GAVIN ESLER AND JEREMY PAXMAN Hello from Gavin Esler in London "An economic Pearl Harbour" - Billionaire investor Warren Buffett describes the financial crisis in the US. There are more questions than answers on Newsnight tonight, but here's the political common ground. The original £37 billion British bank bailout has not worked, and the risks of doing nothing are greater than the risks of doing something. But what does the government's new bank bailout plan mean? What happened to the original £37 billion? Why might this new plan work? How? And can we afford it? We plan to take a long, cool look at what the government is about to do with your money. And they say there are no second acts in political life. The return of Lord Mandelson proved that to be wrong (he's on his third act) and now Ken Clarke is back as Shadow Business Secretary - but is he really being pulled in to make up for the deficiencies of Shadow Chancellor George Osborne? And from Jeremy Paxman in the United States There were little flurries of snow in Washington today. But it will take a lot more than the weather to chill the feelings here about tomorrow's inauguration of America's first black president. There's an almost euphoric feeling about: even sworn foes of the Democrats are willing Obama to do well. Of course, it's partly because the occasion is about more than politics - the president is the physical embodiment of the nation, in the way that no prime minister ever can be - and that element is inevitably more charged when the torch is passed to a new generation, and a man whose skin-colour would once have denied him even the vote, let alone the job of president. The place is so awash with images of the Obama family that sometimes you feel like a visitor to some religious shrine. Of course, it will make tomorrow a momentous day. But it's almost enough to make you feel sorry for the new president, poor chap: how can one human being carry the dreams of so many without ending up disappointing at least some of them? Tonight we're confining ourselves to discussing the little presents George Bush has left him - the war, the crumbling economy and the rest - with, among others, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two reporters who dug up the Watergate scandal, and examining how Obama will lay the ground for what he's going to do. Join us tonight at 22.30 | 
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