How much for The Statue of Liberty?

When  I came to this country in 1997, I was quite ignorant and shall we say naïve. In many ways I still am. America was not a country for me. It was an idea. I was not attracted to the roads and bridges and even the institutions or the politics of the place. How could I? I did not know much about any of them.  And no, it was not even the MTV version of this country that got me to leave my family and all that was familiar.

America in my mind was a place where I could figure it out somehow. Only because so many people who went to US from India somehow had been able to do so.

I was in NY in 1997 and took the subway to Wall Street area for the first time.  I stood by the bull that is there which subsequently I started identifying as the Merrill Lynch bull.( If you have seen the logo of Merrill Lynch and the sculpture of the bull on Wall Street, you would know what I am talking about)

I remember having goose bumps. Perhaps the reason was that my idea of USA was some how represented there in that statue in front of NYSE.

Now NYSE was sold today to the German Bourse.  Perhaps it was a strategic match and the deal was accretive to both parties…blah blah blah….It was also a low point in American history. Way lower than the bankruptcy of Lehman. This was an evidence of bankruptcy of hope in America in its own institutions, in its own belief in itself.

Perhaps next in line is the Statue of Liberty! Could it be more sacred than the symbol and mechanism of  American Capitalism? 

I know that America will reinvent itself? After how much pain? is the real question.