Talk:XYZ Affair

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Thomas Jefferson, quoted in this article: Jefferson Would Have Stood With Cindy Sheehan noted that: "The spirits of the people were so much subdued and reduced to despair by the X Y Z imposture, and other stratagems and machinations, that they would have sunk into apathy and monarchy, as the only form of government which could maintain itself."

Is there not substancial speculation that X, Y, and Z were false flag agents of Adams used to stir up public indignation against France so that the Alien and Sedition Act could be past?

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Two centuries on, do we still not know the identities of the agents? Bastie

the episode was real enough and the names are known. Read any of the books cited.Rjensen 22:06, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Readability 2 bias? 3 Money equivalence? 4 How much was the requested loan? 5 Missing details

[edit] Readability

Please stop wasting the time of other users with your personal stories -- no matter how tantalizing they may be. No one cares. And you're wasting space. freestylefrappe 04:39, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry. I deleted it.—GraemeMcRae^talk 04:47, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] bias?

It seems to me like the article reads with a very strong american bias, while mainly ignoring how the french saw this. Although this is hardly suprising, because quite possibly this entire article is written by american?s ;p Mathmo 13:36, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Money equivalence?

I know that $10M back then must have been a massive amount of money, especially since I don't think the Federal government had taxes yet at that point. Can someone do an article which shows approximate money equivalence at different points in history? I know it's not a simple subject, since barter, changes in the standards of living, and changes in the real cost of various things all contribute to distort things. Maybe the best way to do this would be to simply show the percentage change between decades, and make it clear that extrapolation beyond that decade of time makes the comparison increasingly tenuous. No matter how it's done, it would be nice to see roughly how much $10M back then would be in modern terms. --Scott McNay 06:05, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

It is extremely hard, agreed, because of the difference in standard of living, inflation, and so on. But the national debt as of 1800 was about $83 million [1]. So asking for a bribe equating to a payment of over one tenth of the national debt back then would be akin to asking for $1 trillion today. (Please note that I assume that national debt and inflation are roughly on par between then and now, and so $1T is both original research and probably wrong. But at least it's a ballpark estimate.) Ourai ^т _с 02:13, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Well the bribe to gain access to the minister is about what the US paid 5 years later for all of Louisiana. Rjensen 02:47, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

The bribe requested was about $250k, and the Louisiana Purchase was $15 M. Following a footnote on the Louisiana Purchase page, however, I ran across this [2] handy tool for converting costs. Based on percentage of GDP, $10 M in 1797 dollars is about $300 billion in 2005 dollars. I have added the reference to the article. Ourai ^т _с 22:04, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How much was the requested loan?

In reverting some vandalism, I also reverted a change to the amount of the requested loan. Looking through the article history, I see that it was changed from $10M to $12M only in October by an anon editor with little explanation, so the anon editor who changed it back to $10M (in December) may well have been right. I don't have ready access to any of the cited sources; someone who does please ensure that the correct figure is included (if definitively known). -- Pawl 17:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I fixed it. Rjensen 19:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Missing details

The second paragraph is missing details essential for readability. What were the American delegates blamed for? What documents did the Jeffersonians want to see? And what report did Adams release? Also, I think the real names of X, Y, and Z belong in this paragraph rather than in a footnote.