Dear Uncle Sam (circa 1938)

I am in receipt of a letter dated May 5th, from Mr. Morgenthau, which letter he signed as your Secretary of the Treasury. According to the dictionary, a Treasury is, among other things, a place in which stores of wealth are deposited, and as there does not seem to be any wealth in your Treasury, it would seem that he should have signed the letter as your Treasurer of the Deficit, as, according to the dictionary, a Treasurer is, among other things, an officer who receives the public money and disperses it and, as he has dispersed a great deal more money than he has received, he is in charge of a Deficit, instead of being in charge of the Treasury.

In his letter, he attempts to persuade me that I should lend you some money by buying Savings Bonds and he states that more than 1,260,000 people own more than $1,600,000,000 maturity value of these bonds, in addition to which, I understand that you owe about $36,000,000,000 on various other kinds of bonds and notes, and that you have a contingent liability of additional billions. In his letter, he states that the savings bonds mature in ten years from the date of issue, and that they may be redeemed for a stated amount at any time after sixty days from the date of issue. This all sounds very impressive, but when these bonds mature, or in case an effort is made to have them redeemed previous to maturity, I am wondering what you will exchange for them. Will it be food, clothing and housing, or will it be 59 cent dollars of some other much greater reduced value, which dollars, as was the case with the German Mark, under similar conditions, may be of value mainly as waste paper?

When considering an application for a loan, the reputation of the prospective borrower is generally considered to be of first importance, and to be real frank about it, your actions during the past five years have not been such as to inspire confidence in you, as in addition to spending in countless foolish ways, a great deal more than your income, you have not been absolutely honorable, truthful and reliable. After borrowing large sums of money upon the promise to repay it in gold, you decided not to do so. In addition, you took from your nieces and nephews all of the gold which we had and buried it in the hills of Kentucky. I am wondering if you think that by planting it, you can cause it to grow in value, or if, like whiskey, you think the quality of it will improve with age. You are also forcing your nieces and nephews to turn over to you large sums of money, which you have promised to save for us and to return to us when old age overtakes us. Instead of saving this money for us as promised, however, you have been spending it as fast as it is received, in what appears to be nothing more or less than a drunken joy-ride.

Even though one of your age and experience should realize that it does no good to prime a broken pump, especially after having tried it for several years without success, you continue to prime the business pump, and to kick and cuss it and work on it with a sledgehammer.

I addition to other things, the frequent use of a hypodermic has done you no good, and probably explains why you penalize and abuse your nieces and nephews who are thrifty and industrious, and reward those who are incompetent and lazy; why you killed five or six million little pigs, even though our political friends are always hungry for pork; and why you destroyed crops of cotton, wheat, corn, etc. to the advantage of producers in other nations.

Like any incompetent spendthrift who violates all the tried and tested laws of economics, there must be a day of reckoning for you at some time in the future, at which time you will find it impossible to pay your debts, or else you will be obliged to pay them in depreciated currency. In either event, it does not appear to be safe or wise to lend you any more money to be used by you in making whoopee and playing Santa Claus. In order to save you from yourself and to prevent the dissipation of what few assets you may have left, a guardian should be appointed for you but this will take time and probably cannot be accomplished previous to 1940.

K.W. was my grandfather. I did not discover this letter until some 30 years after I began my own crusade on the issues about which he wrote here. Gives new meaning to the trite phrase "Must be in the genes."

Isn't it interesting that a simple businessman in a small south central Ohio town grasped what was going on under Roosevelt and his minions and knew more about the basic and immutable economic law than all the double-dome MORONS who set in motion a process which will, if not halted, destroy this country.

That "day of reckoning" to which my grandfather referred cannot be put off for much longer.

Are YOU ready for it??

Sounds like your grandfather was a wise man. I recall my own grandfathers advice to "never trade away something that appreciates for something that depreciates, thats the road to the poorhouse." You see all the folks today who tap the equity in their home to buy consumer goods that end up in a landfill or a scrapyard. And the nation does it own a grand scale.

"That "day of reckoning" to which my grandfather referred cannot be put off for much longer. "

Well, it's 60+ years since your granddad wrote that letter, and we're much further along the path. The conventional wisdom in D.C. is that we can continue to do this as long as we wish.

The Republican Party used to be the party of fiscal responsibility. That appears to have changed dramatically in the last few years. That's unfortunate, since we now have two major parties dedicated to spending record amounts of taxpayer funds each year.

Oddly, I'm not hearing cries of "FOUL!" anywhere. Your grandfather was a smart man. Sadly, his letter probably ended up in the same round file as all the others similar to it. A pity.

I view the "uncharacteristic" spending by the GOP as a direct response to the Dems. (Soros & Buffet among them) trying to tank the economy so they can return to power.

A little (retaliatory) pump priming, if you will.

Morgenthau’s most grevious offense was due to his naivete. Appointing Harry Dexter White to Division of Monetary Research and then to Assistant Secretary was a major failure as Treasury Secretary. White's tenure is where the real damage was done. The letter, though prescient, may have been misdirected. Although sending it to White would have fallen on deaf ears.

Morgenthau also proposed a postwar plan for Germany that was tantamount to the genocide of 40% of her population known as the Morgenthau Plan. An excerpt from the link;

"Drew Pearson publicized the plan on September 21, although Pearson himself was sympathetic to it. More critical stories in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal quickly followed. Joseph Goebbels' propaganda machine made extensive use of the Morgenthau Plan, and General George Marshall complained to Morgenthau that German resistance had strengthened. Lt Col John Boettiger said the Morgenthau Plan was "worth thirty divisions to the Germans" (Report on the Morgenthau Diaries, p. 41ff)."

Very interesting...

I live near the juncture of 83 and 209, between Cambridge and Coshocton. Are you familiar with that area?

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