Quotes about Department or the Treasury

Sheila Bair

Why did we do the bailouts? It was all about the bondholders. They [the Treasury Department officials] did not want to impose losses on bondholders and we did. We kept saying, “There is no insurance premium on bondholders”… For the little guy on Main Street who has bank deposits, we charge the banks a premium for that, and it gets passed on to the customers. We don’t have the same thing for bondholders. They’re supposed to take losses.

The Treasure Officials had a reason for bailing out the bondholders. They were afraid that if bank bondholders and owners took big losses at that time, it would “spook” the financial markets and cause even worse panics than then existed. The political pressure would be to bail out the financial institutions which would have lost much more money after the “spooking”. So it was, they argued, less cost to the taxpayer to bail out the bondholders at the beginning and save the bailout costs later. Some argued that there was no reason to bail out the richest people in America if they lose a lot of money so it is not an issue of bail out now or later. History shoed that the financial leaders did have the clout to force the government to bail them out however. There are some who wanted to have a showdown with the wealth banks and other financial institutions and let them go bankrupt and then the economy would right itself. No one really knows for sure which is why Economics is called the “dismal science”—See {596873}.

Alexander James Dallas

The Treasury was suffering under every kind of embarrassment. The demands upon it were great in amount, while the means for satisfying them were comparatively small, precarious in collection and difficult in their application.

New York Times

A Bank in Human Form.

Morgan had arranged to lend the government $36 million in Gold when the national treasury was virtually bankrupt.

Hamilton Wright

It is designed to place the entire interstate traffic in the habit forming drugs under the administration of the Treasury Department. It is the opinion of the American Opium Commission that it would bring this whole traffic and the use of these drugs into the light of day and thereby create a public opinion against the use of them that would be more important, perhaps, than the Act itself.

The main feature of this law was to establish a very small tax on opiates. The tax was not significant as a revenue source, but was meant to make public that which had been a clandestine activity and also reduce the promotion of sales. Users had to fill out special Treasury Department forms to order their drugs, and none could be delivered to anyone who did not order on the special forms.

Daniel Webster

He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet.

Langdon Cheves

I would rather see the objects of the war fail,—I would rather see the seamen of the country …. and our commerce swept away …, than see the long arm of the Treasury indirectly thrust into the pocket of the citizen through the penal law.

Alexander James Dallas

The government was unable to avert or to control the course of events.

The U. S. was bankrupt, and Dallas wrote to government bondholders announcement the formal stoppage of interest payments.

Charles Evans Hughes

Contracts, however expressed, cannot fetter the constitutional authority of the Congress. Contracts may create rights of property, but when contracts deal with a subject matter which lies within the control of the Congress they have a congenital infirmity. Parties cannot remove their transactions from the reach of dominant constitutional power by making contracts about them.

During the early years of the New Deal, gold and silver certificates were ordered turned in to the U. S. Treasury, at a devalued price, and Congress passed a joint resolution declaring provisions in public and private contracts for payment in gold contrary to public policy and unenforceable in the courts. In a landmark decision on the contract issue, the Supreme Court ruled that:. control of gold and the monetary supply

Alexander C. Hanson

Not only have government bills been dishonored and the interest on the public debt remains unpaid, but … so completely empty is the Treasury and destitute of credit, that funds cannot be obtained to defray the ordinary expenses of the different departments.

Eleanor Roosevelt

My second tea this afternoon was for the women in executive positions in the Departments of State, Treasury and War, and certain Commissions. Many of these women do really important work and are all indispensable parts of their offices. …. They are valuable public servants and it is most interesting to me and to the Cabinet women to have an opportunity to see them and talk to them about their work.

The FDR administration was the first that allowed women to serve in executive and high level management positions of the government. Frances Perkins, the Secretary of Labor, was the first American female cabinet minister. Most people in America had not known that there were female executives in the government until Mrs. Roosevelt wrote this column. While the majority of Americans seemed to support this idea, there were religious and cultural conservatives who were much opposed, and pointed to this as another way in which the Roosevelts were “undermining the traditions of America.”

Francis Elias Spinner

A woman can use scissors better than a man, and she will do it cheaper.

During the Civil War, the government produced paper money for the first time. The clerks in the Treasury had to cut the printed money to size and separate the several bills on a sheet. However, with more work and men needed for the war effort, Spinner came up with the good idea of using women as Treasury Department Clerks. Chase, one of Lincoln’s rivals for the Presidency, was the Secretary of the Treasury and although not enthused allowed Spinner to allow some women into the Federal Workforce. See {629786} for one reaction.

Rufus King

We go on in Congress as when you left us …. Resolves have been passed upon Resolves--and letter after letter has been sent to the deficient States, and all without the desired effect. We are without money or the prospect of it in the Federal Treasury; and the States, many of them, care so little about the Union, that they take no measures to keep a representation in Congress.

Even after the American Revolution, the Government of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation was a mess which would only be resolved by the Constitutional Convention the next year and the ratification of the Constitution.

Department or the Treasury Quotes