2010-10-25 00:43:00
Company Behind Times Square Debt Clock May Be Building a New Clock Capable of Counting Into the Quadrillions
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As of the time that this article was written, the current outstanding public debt of the United States was $13,667,983,325,978.31.
That's a little under $13.7 trillion, which means that every man, woman and child in the United States currently owes about $45,000 for their share of the US public debt.
If you have ever been to Manhattan in New York City, then you may have seen the "National Debt Clock" which is on display on Sixth Avenue.
The debt clock was originally built back in 1989, when New York real estate developer Seymour Durst wanted to shine a light on the country's rapidly increasing debt load.
A couple of years ago, the dollar sign on the "National Debt Clock" had to be "sacrificed" in order to make space for an extra digit when the US national debt load surpassed the $10 trillion mark.
The original developer of the sign wanted to shine a spotlight on the nation's spiraling debt load. However, even he didn't expect that the nation would one day have debt in excess of $10 trillion, as evidenced by the fact that the clock couldn't originally display anything over $10 trillion.
Fast forward to late 2010. According to the Globe and Mail, Durst Co. (which is the company that currently maintains the clock) is reportedly considering "building a new clock capable of counting quadrillions".
Quadrillions!
A quadrillion dollars would look like this:
$1,000,000,000,000,000
That's a thousand trillion dollars.
That would be a far cry from the days (just about 10 years ago) when the debt clock was actually shut down because it wasn't capable of counting backwards (those were the days).
Considering that the United States is expected to have a total debt load of $20 trillion by 2020, making preparations for a larger debt clock probably isn't that bad of an idea.
Source: Globe and Mail - Death by Debt: Governments need a cure - Fast
Source: Davemanuel.com - US Debt Clock
Filed under: The Economic Meltdown
3 COMMENTS - What Say You?
Comment by Jim Mulligan on October 26, 2010 @ 7:59 pm
Great site...much appreciated.
"That would be a far cry from the days (just about 10 years ago) when the debt clock was actually shut down because it wasn't capable of counting backwards (those were the days)."
On an annualized basis - there has not been a year since 1957 that the National Debt has not increased....
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Comment by Dave Manuel on October 26, 2010 @ 8:20 pm
Hi there Jim
Thanks for the comment.
This is from Wikipedia:
In 2000, due to an improving debt situation, the clock started to run backwards.[4] With the original purpose of the clock being to highlight the rising debt and the reverse giving a mixed message, and with the display not being designed to properly run backwards, the clock was unplugged and covered with a red, white and blue curtain in September 2000, with the national debt standing at roughly 5.7 trillion dollars.[6]
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Comment by Andy on November 09, 2010 @ 11:38 am
It wouldn't have run backwards. Based on the current $13.7 billion debt basis the debt has increased every year since 1969. Column B here:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy11/sheets/hist07z1.xls
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