But having read about Mr Grasso's compensation, many investors who have lost pots of cash in the past three years may think that the real beneficiary of their dollars was the grinning bell-ringer himself.

ECONOMIST: The New York Stock Exchange

Yet surely there had been something else, another music inside the public proclamations, and there must have been those who could hear more than the facts, gifted listeners who could pick out the subtleties in the way one bell worked against the others, say, or in the pauses when one ringer stopped, weary or undecided, or touched with the knowledge of imminent mortality.

NEWYORKER: The Bell Ringer