The next morning, Mr. Truman rose early. Nothing had disturbed him the night before, so he had slept well.
After getting up, he ate a little and then began his daily work.
The Federal president might seem noble and prestigious, but in terms of the nature of his work, he might have been the most harshly oppressed of all.
Even the most ordinary manual laborers at the bottom of society had weekends when they could catch their breath.
But the president of the Federal Government might not even be able to sleep in on a weekend, take a leisurely nap in the afternoon with nothing to do, or enjoy a cup of afternoon tea.
"This was sent over by the Financial Supervisory Commission this morning."
The secretary set one document aside by itself, which meant it was more important than the others and needed to be handled first.
Mr. Truman said, "Thank you," then picked up the document.
It concerned some of the drawbacks of banks: anonymous accounts and untraceable flows of money.
He actually knew very well that these rules had been established by capital to better protect itself.
You could never know who owned an anonymous account and the money inside it—not even the shares or bonds held in it.
That allowed some people to use such things to hide their wealth with ease.
The Federal Revenue Service was deeply troubled by this as well. Countless anonymous accounts contained vast amounts of funds with unknown sources and unknown compositions.
The banks were unwilling to cooperate, leaving the Federal Revenue Service powerless unless its agents stationed themselves inside the banks every day.
Whoever withdrew money from one of those anonymous accounts could be arrested, of course—but that still required the banks' cooperation.
Yet that was clearly unlikely.
That was