National Debt Clock runs out of digits

The National Debt Clock in New York City now doesn’t have enough digits to display the bloated U.S. national debt.

What’s even scarier is that the clock’s owners are modifying it to be able to display a national debt of as much as a quadrillion dollars. That’s $1,000,000,000,000,000. When the National Debt Clock was first installed in 1989, according to the Associated Press, the U.S. national debt was $2.7 trillion.

The clock, which resembles an electronic billboard, shows not only the overall national debt, but also a breakdown of the debt per American family.

From the AP:

As a short-term fix, the digital dollar sign on the billboard-style clock near Times Square has been switched to a figure – the “1” in $10 trillion. It’s marking the federal government’s current debt at about $10.2 trillion.

The Durst Organization says it plans to update the sign next year by adding two digits. That will make it capable of tracking debt up to a quadrillion dollars.

The late Manhattan real estate developer Seymour Durst put the sign up in 1989 to call attention to what was then a $2.7 trillion debt.

– AP

Still image of National Debt Clock from CNN video.

NYC National Debt Clock runs out of digits – Yahoo News