Former NYSE chairman reflects on market’s 9/11 reopening: ‘America always rises in the darkest of hours’

Former NYSE Chairman Dick Grasso says market's triumphant reopening after 9/11 attacks served as a "symbol" America and its economy "would never succumb to terrorism."

DICK GRASSO: As [former] Governor Pataki said earlier, America always rises in the darkest of hours. That opening bell was rung more so as a symbol that the American economy, that America as we know it, would never succumb to terrorism. Three-thousand people, almost 3,000, died, were killed that day, and that opening bell rung by New York's finest and New York's bravest cops and firemen who ran into those buildings, that was a tribute to say to the terrorists: You've destroyed billions in property, taken almost 3,000 lives, but America will rise and you have failed. That's what it was all about.

I was so proud that we weren't Democrats, we weren't Republicans, we weren't Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch. We were all Americans. We came together and we did it in honor and in memory of those who were killed that day.