Of all the utterances George W. Bush made in his 2000 campaign for president none have been subsequently been disregarded quite the way "no more nation-building" has. The Bush administration might tell you 9/11 changed everything, but there is evidence people like Dick Cheney had a plan all along to build a group of U.S. friendly nations in the Middle East.

Regardless, nation building might be entering a new phase this week with the first ever U.S. military command for Africa, or Africom. The enormous continent had previously been divided up between three military commands. The plan for Africom, reports The New York Times’ Thom Shanker, is to bring the Pentagon together with the State Dept. and U.S. Agency for Intl. Development to improve conditions in Africa. Critics charge, though, that this is the militarization of foreign policy. Also, given the Bush administration’s track record, almost all African leaders have been cool to the idea, fearing U.S. military bases.-MB

The New York Times’ Louise Story and Ben White recount the failure of Lehman Brothers to either find a buyer or raise the necessary capital before it became bankrupt. Indicative of the incestuous nature of the financial crisis, Lehman did have some success getting money from AIG (the insurance giant that got a govt. bailout) but the banks (JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America) wouldn’t buy it.  Aside from the complicated story of how Lehman was allowed to go bankrupt and the Treasury Dept. saved similar investment bank Bear Stearns, is a simple tale of fairness within Lehman: CEO Richard Fuld is still worth over $100 million but he’s cut off the severance packages for about 1,000 employees who filed for bankruptcy.

The Times’ has run a series of excellent articles giving context to how the financial crisis happened. Particularly of note to Understanding Government readers, is an article Friday by Stephen Labaton that examines the painfully business-friendly practices at the Securities and Exchange Commission. This included lifting restrictions in 2004 on how much debt investment banks could take on.-MB

The Washington Post’s David Cho reports that Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson named Neel Kashkari, a current bureaucrat and former Goldman Sachs official to monitor the Treasury Dept’s $700 billion bailout plan. Kashkari is an interim appt. and his replacement will take the plan into the next administration.

The bailout package, which was signed into law Friday, calls for contracting out several accountants and asset managers who would determine how to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on lousy mortgage-related assets. As a former Goldman Sachs CEO, it at least is eyebrow raising that Paulson would name Kashkari for this interim position. But a more tangible conflict of interest could take root in the next couple of weeks when asset managers from companies looking to sell their assets get govt. jobs.-MB