The US Debt Clock which was installed on the face of a Manhattan building made headlines months ago because this second generation version of the original US debt clock had run out of capacity: it only had room for 13 digits (not including cents!). Since the US national debt surpassed $10 trillion, there are plans to replace it with a new version.
There is an online version of the US debt clock which keeps track of the debt on a real time basis and also features a whole slew of metrics such as the debt per person, the amount of debt held by foreign countries, private debt per citizen (think credit and mortgages), and so on. Below is a screen shot, but click on the picture (or here) to see the clock being updated in real time. Absolutely staggering stuff. Makes me want to decrease my allocation to US equities…
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Wow, 10 trillion dollars. It is just impossible to comprehend that quantity of money. Debt seems to be some sort of bad disease and the US has certainly caught that one. Very cool to see the breakdowns of debt and such.
I recently watched an interesting documentary called I.O.U.S.A. which featured a segment about the debt clock. It’s an interesting watch – I’d reccomend it.
Wow, check out the unfunded liabilities per person. $191k! Yikes.
Did anyone see the movie about US debit? Just forgot the name – it was about US Debt, China who owns US Debt etc? What was that movie title?
@Alex – I think you may be thinking of I.O.U.S.A.? I haven’t seen it, but others have mentioned it is worth watching…
RE: August 12 2009 post
Are you kidding me? Were we at 10 trillion just three months ago? How do you spend a trillion every month and a half?!!??
Wow, incredible. How long can that be sustained!