Talk:Symbols of the United States Department of the Treasury

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United States: Government

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The Watchdog Seal: Information about this comes from the US Treasury website (BTW - the correct and updated link should be http://www.treasury.gov/about/history/Pages/watchdogs.aspx - the one listed is dead), and the seal does have “US Treasury” written on it, however the story of Nero involves his guarding of the US Mint, which was a separate organization independent of the Treasury until 1873. So in many ways this doesn’t add up. The overlap with the use of the other historical treasury seal (1780 to 1963) is also puzzling. Can anyone shed more light on this?

The part about the dog being Nero seems to be merely legend... since the Treasury website is really the only info we have on it, and they appear to have no hard information on the seal (other than the physical item and the fact it was used), almost everything therefore is speculation. The federal government was very, very small then -- while they may have technically been different organizations often the same people were involved or certainly would know each other and interact often, so some cross-references wouldn't be out of the question. But, it's as least as likely that the Nero connection was an invented myth from a later date -- the treasury web page (and the article) are careful to say that this is only department legend. The common elements do seem to suggest the maker of the watchdog seal was including some of the themes from the department seal, but while that seems logical it would also be speculation since as far as I know, there is no knowledge of who made the seal or when. You'd think it would have been after the original seal was designed, so the designer would have had to known of it, but beyond that it's pretty hard to say without any more concrete information available, and I don't know of any. It would be good to at least know the date ranges of known uses of the seal; perhaps the Treasury has some info not disclosed. Carl Lindberg (talk) 01:16, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No discussion?

I would think that moves and name changes of articles like this would warrant some kind of discussion or expressed intent in advance.--Godot13 (talk) 17:42, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The article move didn't really seem controversial. Wikipedia:Requested Moves states that discussions are not required for moves that are not controversial. As for the move itself, it was done to reflect recent changes that were made to the article. It now concerns the flag and seal of the subject in question, so just having "Seal" in the title would not be accurate. Regards, Illegitimate Barrister (talk) 18:20, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Any U.S. currency with the treasury seal is still obligated to be treated as legal tender and is redeemable at face value. U.S. Currency is the only one in the world that guarantees the value of notes bearing the treasury seal. I do not think that the Seal of the Treasury Department (the object that renders it legal tender) is merely a symbol to be equated with the flag of the Treasury Department.--Godot13 (talk) 18:27, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And the addition of the Flag to the article is nothing more than a long verbatim quote from the Treasury Department." It is not integrated into the fabric of the existing article and has almost no bearing whatsoever on the Treasury Seal and/or the issuance of currency. I do not see it's relevance.--Godot13 (talk) 18:29, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is a fascinating article I had no idea would have existed. Since the flag is basically the same escutcheon and text of the seal imposed on a background with an eagle, I don't see a problem with its inclusion at this title. The dog seal and the seal's use as the department's logo for uses other than currency make them general symbols as well. I agree with Godot that more information would be helpful, such as how the flag is used and where it is flown, as well as a description of how its features connect to the seal. It's also not a state flag, so that needs to be fixed in the infobox. Reywas92^Talk 01:25, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The alternative to moving the article would have been to create a new, separate article for the flag(s) themselves. However, such an article would surely have been deleted on notability grounds. Illegitimate Barrister (talk) 23:45, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]