Greets and saluts from the NYC metro area. The Port Authority says that Ground Zero construction will create thousands of jobs over the next few years, but that’s exactly what they’ve been saying for years now as construction was delayed. It’s good that they’re finally building - and the Freedom Tower is rising slowly but steadily - 10+ stories now. It’s just that the wait was intolerable.

Meanwhile, the economic mess on Wall Street is making it tough to lease space around Lower Manhattan. Merill Lynch is consolidating with Bank of America and that means that the World Financial Center is losing a major tenant.

The economic mess also means that Tim Geithner is going to continue to have problems filling slots at Treasury. His choice for deputy, Annette Nazareth withdrew because of her prior experience. She was at the SEC and failed to pick up on the Wall Street excessive risk taking that led to the toxic paper crisis. Her job? Heading market regulation division, where she put in an “oversight” regime that was insufficient to the task.

It also means that filling other slots is going to be exceedingly difficult because the pool of people from whom Obama and Geithner can fill Treasury positions is going to come from the same bunch of people responsible for the melt-down in the first place.