National Debt Clock Overflowed, Extended By a Digit

hackingbear writes "The National Debt Counter, erected in 1989 when the US debt was 'merely' a tiny $2.7 trillion, has been moving so much that it recently ran out of digits to display the ballooning figure: $10,150,603,734,720, or roughly $10.2 trillion, as of Saturday afternoon. To accommodate the extra '1,' the clock was hacked: the '1' from "$10.2" has been moved left to the LCD square once occupied solely by the digital dollar sign. A non-digital, improvised dollar sign has been pasted next to the '1.' It will be replaced in 2009 with a new clock able to track debt up to a quadrillion dollars, which is a '1' followed by 15 zeros. That should be good enough for a few more months at least, I believe." Adds reader MarkusQ, "I know Dick Cheney has assured us that 'Deficits don't matter' but I can't help wondering if we should be fixing the problem rather than the sign."

Comments

Re:Clock can run in reverse.

[Drakin020]

I'm just saying...That big number never went down when Clinton was in office.

Thank Obama and Barney Frank

[zymano]

Please continue to force Fannie & Freddie an sue our banks into giving bad loans.

Re:The debt did go down

[letxa2000]

Actually the debt realtive to the GDP went down which is all that matters.

It's all that matters if you're trying to deceive people into thinking Clinton had a surplus.

Re:Clock can run in reverse.

[letxa2000]

It did, but not in the way this guy thinks it should have.

I'm "the guy." I just happen to be a user here, too. :)

By law the money needed to go to pay down our public debt first, which is real debt despite this guys claims.

If you read my article you'll find I didn't contradict that. I didn't say the public debt didn't go down, but every single year the intergovernmental debt went up more. If the public debt had gone down more than the intergovernmental debt had gone up, that'd have been something. Unfortunately it wasn't the case.