This recent global financial crisis has seen astronomical figures with countless zeros being thrown about as investment banks tumble and Governments desperately pump in bailouts to prop up their struggling economies. Amidst this financial panic, the US debt clock has been quietly ticking…till it recently ran out of digits at over US$10 trillion (over RM34 trillion – which is probably more than our GDP!)!
Read more below.
The clock was put up by the late real estate mogul Seymour Durst in 1989 when the U.S. government’s debt was a mere $2.7 trillion, and was even turned off during the 1990s when the debt decreased.
The current clock had enough digits to measure the amount of money owed by the U.S. government until debt recently hit $10 trillion.
Below the amount of the national debt on the clock is another row of figures: “YOUR Family share.” As of Saturday afternoon, the $86,023 fit properly into the respective LCD squares. (source)
In this unprecedented times, it appears that the US has started to fail as the greatest and biggest economy in the world in this financial crisis that shook the world. With each average family racking up close to US$90k (approximately RM300k) in debt, the debt clock puts it in a stark reality as the numbers continue to tick.
October 14th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Other countries’ governments have also started pumping in lots of cash to bailout failing organisations. It’s a domino effect to the rest of the world.
October 14th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
and this is the sole reason why other countries are trying very hard to ensure US does not fail…
why dont we just let everythign fail and start from the beginning? ahhhh… those at the top will not be happy, cos it means they will have to come down…all the way down.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:03 am
Penny – Agreed. Unfortunately when US falls, the world falls with it.
Zewt – That’s a good idea…to start all over again!
November 13th, 2008 at 11:35 am
[...] recent talk about US debt surpassing US$10 trillion, about Wall Street collapsing and big banks falling although scary was a little too big to [...]