The Freedom Tower

The World Socialist Website says another blow to has been struck to “the terminally crippled rebuilding of the World Trade Center site by the New York Port Authority and billionaire developer Larry Silverstein. Merrill Lynch announced last week that it would not be moving its headquarters to one of the office towers planned, but not yet built, at ground zero.

The announcement came the day before Merrill—the nation’s largest brokerage firm and rumored to be on the short list of potential bank defaults—unveiled a fourth consecutive quarterly loss of $4.65 billion. This brings its losses for the year to $19 billion.

The economic crisis that has gripped Wall Street as the housing bubble collapses has already necessitated a government-organized buyout of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase in March, followed by the federal assumption of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s debts, and the default of IndyMac Bank in July.

Chase was potentially another anchor tenant at the redeveloped World Trade Center, but with its new $30 billion acquisition, it too is unlikely to put up money for new offices.

As hundreds of billions of fictitious capital vanishes overnight, the gleaming glass towers envisioned in the architectural renderings for the World Trade Center site likewise threaten to dissolve, bringing to mind Marx’s description of capitalism in the Communist Manifesto—“all that is solid, melts into air.”

Yet a grim reality remains on the ground. As the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center fast approaches, the 16-acre site remains surrounded by chain-link fence, a huge construction zone humming with heavy machinery on which no permanent structure has been completed.