ITS ALL ABOUT APPEARANCES

So much was made of the need to quickly rebuild at Ground Zero and to get Lower Manhattan back on track after 9/11.

We needed to show everyone that the financial center of the word could not be halted even by the death of nearly 3,000.

Short cuts were taken and the recovery effort quickly gave way to a construction site,

False information was given out by the EPA about the quality of air so that people would come back to work.

The economic fate of the country depended on the well being of Wall Street and the top priority of all in power was to keep the economic machine running.

First they bailed out the airlines and then all efforts went into protecting the economic infrastructure of Wall Street.

It didn’t matter that body parts still lay unrecovered.

It didn’t matter that that hundreds of thousands would be put at risk do to the quality of the air.

It didn’t matter that remains were cast aside in a landfill with no plan for recovery.

And it didn’t matter that there was no real comprehensive rebuilding plan as can be seen by the huge void that still remains at Ground Zero

Because all that really mattered was the appearance of financial stability.

And now it appears that the lack of regulation of the same financial institutions that they needed to save may be the downfall of Ground Zero itself.

Goldman Sachs has already turned its back on Ground Zero moving its new headquarters and the 3 million square feet that they were going to occupy at the rebuilt site.

AIG is now being run by the government and it does not look like they will have the finances to take over the 4 million square feet that they had agreed to occupy.

And finally it does not seem likely that Merrill Lynch will be occupying the 4.2 million square to which it had committed.

And billions more will continue to be spent on buildings for which there appear to be no tenants. And the 9/11 museum and most of the memorial will be buried underground.

Because it continues to be about appearances and no matter what the Port Authority reports next week it always will.