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."

Cheney is right....

Deficits don't matter. All that matters is that your dogs are bigger and meaner than the debt collectors'.

Re:Cheney is right....

that might be true if our society weren't so dependent on global trade. but if our trade partners suddenly cut all economic relations with us our domestic economy would collapse. we depend on other nations for manufacturing, investments, and imports/exports.

we might be able to raid other countries for their oil, but we can't use military coercion to force other countries to import our goods or manufacture our raw materials. and since our trade relations with other nations are generally good for us, bad for them, if we're no longer an economic superpower, i imagine most of the developing nations we exploit would cut their ties with us and just nationalize the resources we've hijacked from them like Venezuela has done.

i mean, if we don't have money to lend other nations, the IMF & World Bank would cease to be relevant. and without the power and influence of the IMF/World Bank, we wouldn't be able to dictate the domestic policies of other nations anymore. so 3rd world nations who've allowed us to privatize their industries and open up their markets to us would cease to allow themselves to be exploited.

and quite frankly, we need them more than they need us. many American-based corporate conglomerates would tank if our globalization policies were reversed. WalMart and other retailers wouldn't have cheap sweatshop made goods to sell. Monsanto would lose most of their profits made from selling developing nations GMO seeds every planting season. and 38% of Microsoft's annual revenue comes from sales outside of the U.S. heck, Hollywood makes more money from foreign ticket sales than from the domestic box office ($12 billion a year versus $9 billion).

if our money was certainly no good internationally, or if countries like China decided to collect on our debts, we would be royally screwed.

Re:Cheney is right....

If China got pissed and cut off all exports to us... their economy would implode. And the people would hold the communist party accountable--revolution would be in the streets and China would become be under new management by the end of the month.

The US is integral to the world market. This is a classic shoot your face to spite your nose situation.

Cheney's strategy was "starve the beast"

If you spend a lot on your administration, to win over voters or do whatever it is you want, then when the Democrat gets into office, he or she will be forced to cut spending so as to create a surplus while keeping the Republican's low taxes, lest they get "tax hike" backlash. At the same time, whenever "starve the beast" fails, deficits don't matter, or deficits are the grease that keeps the gears of the economy going.

Republican politicians like McCain say we're supposed to reduce spending, (in order to reduce national debt, though this step on the flowchart may be skipped depending on the audience), and we also should reduce taxes further, but then how will we get rid of the national debt?

Furthermore, if the Republicans are to perpetually starve the beast and fail, clearly their strategy needs to change. They need to raise deficits so much that the interest itself is as burdensome as the current deficit levels by themselves. That, and if the Republicans are perpetually starving the beast, maybe they should at least be doing so with programs like national healthc----oh, wait.

The preferred method of starving the beast is through increases in the national defense budget, it would seem. John McCain has expressed need for a spending freeze in all areas but that, which would cut off funding for new NASA projects (which aren't entitlements, including Orion, which was approved in a separate bill), while his close colleague Lindsey Graham wants to cut the budget by 5% in all areas but national defense.

Re:Cheney is right....

Yeah, but when the debters include China, where does that rule lead you?

Wondering if a Rottweiler can beat 100 angry weaner dogs?

Signed Binary FTW

The largest bit became a one? It overflowed?

So now it's negative?

We're rich! So that's how we were going to pay for the bail-out, SS, medicare, medicaid...

Clock can run in reverse.

This is the second debt clock. The first version could only count upward, and when the budget had a surplus back in the Clinton years, and the debt began to decrease, the debt clock was shut down. After a year or so, it was then replaced with the current version, which has the ability to count both upward and downward. The downward capability has not been used during the Bush years.

Re:Clock can run in reverse.

Thats really sad isnt it, that we at one point WHERE paying down the debt. And the sad thing is Bush cant even blame the war... he got rid of ALL of Clintons budget concessions not long after becoming president. If he had kept them, even with the war, we would have had the debt paid off by 2011., as of now without serious cuts in spending and raising taxes in some form (which could be as easy as repealing the Bush tax cuts) it could be 2070 by the time we get out of debt. And these are people who sold themselves as fiscal conservatives.

Re:Clock can run in reverse.

actually the assertions are not entirely accurate in that whole spiel. The debt DID go down, but it was the way it went down that was not readily visible. The persons agenda clouds the fact that our debt needs to be paid down in certain ways before it can be paid off completely. Corporate accounting is not the same as governmental accounting, I know this one for a fact working for a school district and the specific ways we have to work our books that would make a corporate accountant freak out.

As Feynman said ...

The late Richard Feynman had an appropriate comment for this, I think:

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

Perhaps they can get a new model that displays the debt in scientific notation -- it could be named the "Cheney Memorial Clock".

Re:As Feynman said ...

Yeah, but Cheney was the one dumb enough to draw the "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" conclusion from Reagan's actions.

We need engineers in government, not politicians and lawyers. They don't have any respect for what happens when you ignore science and mathematical facts and press on as if they didn't matter.

The Logic of Failure....

Math says it bad, but not quite AS bad

First of all, 2.7 in 1989 are worth more than the same amount in 2007. Inflation calculator says 2.7 trillion in 1989 equal 4.6 trillion in 2008.

Secondly, what's really important is the debt-per-capita ratio, and the US population has increased. In 1989 the US population was 246 million; in 2008, it's 305 million.

That means, that in 2008 dollars equivalent, the per-capita debt in 1989 was $18,000, while in 2008, the per capita debt is $32,000.

Yes, we do owe more. But we "only", per capita and in equivalent monetary value, owe about 80% more, as opposed to 370% more, as the original numbers would make you believe.

You're wrong to think it linear

Your ability to repay debt is not linear but depends on the amount as a ratio to your disposable income.

Consider repaying $1000/month on your credit card. For many people that might be hardship. For most people, repaying $2000/month is not 2 times as hard, butmuch harder.

Similarly, repaying $18k per person is a lot easier than repaying $32k, by much more than a factor of 2.

Of course that's all academic since nobody seems to be planning on repaying this debt.

Re:Math says it bad, but not quite AS bad

The problem with applying math that way is that today, more than one in eight US citizens lives below the poverty line, jobs are vanishing at an alarming rate, and the number of parasitic, wealthy corporations and individuals has grown while the middle class has become a much smaller group. And that leaves a much smaller pool of available resources to tap in addressing today's vastly larger debt. Thus, the per capita comparison is ultimately meaningless. Neither the very poor nor the very rich are going to pay.

he supports the terrorists

Adds reader MarkusQ, "I know Dick Cheney has assured us that 'Deficits don't matter' [CC] but I can't help wondering if we should be fixing the problem rather than the sign."

Why does this guy hate America so much?

Re:he supports the terrorists

Why does this guy hate America so much?

Who, Cheney? It does seem odd, he's certainly profited by the country's action.

Oh, wait.

Perfect Time

Now is the perfect time to convert to the decimal system!

National debt goes from $10.2 trillion to only $10.2 billion (10^6) without paying a single cent of it!

Re:Perfect Time

We use the decimal system. We just run off of short scale instead of long scale [wikipedia.org].

Another Republican "Victory"

What "fiscal conservatives"!

But wait, the debt has grown insanely under every single Republican president in the last 40 years.

How could that be?

The Republicans aren't fiscally conservative at all. Every single republican president has spent like a drunken sailor and GWB is the worst of the lot.

The only thing more stupid than Tax and Spend is Spend and Spend.

Re:Analog it

Why don't they just make it an analog clock? The hands could simply spin around faster and faster as the situation worsens, which would be much more amusing. The numbers are fairly meaningless anyway.

George W. Bush is that you?

Re:Analog it

George W. Bush is that you?

Must be. In the right part of his brain nothing is left and in the left part of his brain nothing is right!!!

Re:Analog it

Great idea for a DIY fan!

According to how much the debt increased lately [treasurydirect.gov] if you wrote values from $0 to $10,000 around the frame of your fan, you'd need to make the fan run at about 1,300 - 1,500 rpm to represent the rate at which the debt is increasing.

Be careful though, on some days it can hit an average of 6,900 rpm (like on the 30th of October). That would suck if the public debt made your fan fly apart!

Re:non-digital dollar sign

OMG the dollar sign is static... it's the end of the world!!!!

You're right. After the upcoming total economic collapse, we'll need the clock to be able to display the debt in terms of Chinese yuan or Euros. The current design does not allow for that.

Wrong

The debt clock gives a per family portion. ~$86k. Compare that with the median income. Whoo!

Re:i give it two years

Sort of a Moore's Law for debt, eh?

Every 2 terms of republican presidency, the national debt increases by a factor of 10. :D

Incidentally, anyone know what 1989's $2.7 Trillion is in today's dollars?