National Debt Clock in New York Runs Out of Digits
How Much of the National Debt is Your Share, and to Whom is it Owed?
How Much of the Number shown on the National Debt Clock Belongs to You?
As consumers, we all know what happens if we run up our credit card bills. Pretty soon the amount of interest we have to pay each month begins to cripple our household budget. We end up spending so much money just to cover the minimum monthly payments that it seems like we'll never get ahead. According to zfacts.com, right now, the national debt clock stands at $10,229,613,826,553.72. That's a lot of numbers and that's a lot of debt. Over $10.2 trillion in debt owed by this country. Every man woman and child who is a citizen of this country owns more than $33,000 of the very big number shown on the national debt clock. For a family of 3 that's just about $100,000 of debt. Even with all the taxes we're paying the number on the national debt clock increases by about $3.24 billion every day.
Why is the National Debt Clock Racing so Fast?
After watching the deficit shrink under Bill Clinton, we've seen the number on the national debt clock grow from 5.7 Trillion to $10.2 Trillion from 2001 to 2008. The following list is excerpted from zfacts.com and shows the three primary reasons for this massive increase during this time.
1. Lowered taxes on the rich (by far the biggest factor)
2. The cost of the Iraq invasion and continued occupation
3. Loosened controls on Wall Street
To Whom is the National Debt Owed?
Much of the amount shown on the national debt clock is financed through the sales of Treasury Bonds and T-Bills. These can be purchased by anyone with the money to do so. So far, according to the Grandfather Economic Report Series, nearly a quarter of the amount shown on the national debt clock is owed to foreign interests. This means that we owe trillions to countries like China and Japan. Furthermore, we rely on those countries to continue to purchase Treasury bonds and T-Bills for the continued cash flow to run our country. What would happen if those countries suddenly stopped buying US debt? Even worse, what would happen if they decided to start reselling the debt they own on the open market? Things would get pretty ugly, pretty fast. It would make the current financial meltdown look like the best of times.
Sources:
zfacts.com/p/461.html
home.att.net/~mwhodges/debt.htm
Published by Brad Sylvester - Featured Contributor in Lifestyle
Brad spent 18 years in the consumer electronics industry, including more than ten years in new product development. He now writes full time from his home in the mountains of New Hampshire. View profile
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- The national debt clock had to remove the dollar sign in order to accommodate another digit.
- Over the last 8 years, the national debt has gone from 5.7 trillion to more than $10.2 trillion.
14 Comments
Post a CommentA new debt clock because we've maxed out the old one.
As a country we've had the mentality of a teenager with their first credit card. I sure like the clock in my town better, it tells how many billions that Walmart has saved people...oh, but wait, how much revenue went to China et al. and how many went in debt to buy junk they don't need. :-(
I'm just amazed that anyone would vote for a member of the party that caused this mess, but I see McCain/Palin signs on the lawns of the middle class and the poor, not just the wealthy. Incomprehensible, at least to me.
Great article brad.
Joshua, quite so. Increasing the nation's inflow does no good unless we reduce the outflows as well. Just to clarify, the first bullet point represents corporations and subsidies as well as taxeson wealthy individuals.
William, yes, it is good for other to have a stake in our success, but with the current rate of growth and vast potential of the Chinese economy, it seems as though very soon we will be far more dependent upon their continued financial patronage than they are on the US treasury debt. Mutual co-dependency is not the problem, it is the imbalance that is growing between our need for each other. I fear that within a few years, China will have vastly more financial leverage upon us than we on them.
Brad,
Enjoyed the article, and I'm with you, it's totally sickening that our nation is this deep in debt. Cheney is flat wrong, Reagan actually proved that the deficit does matter as his policies came back to bite us largely AFTER he left office (and in fairness, I'm a pretty big fan of Reagan...I just think he was dead wrong when he cut taxes without cutting spending...).
However, I'd challenge the first reason you cited for the massive increase in the national debt: lowered taxes on the rich. The fact is, we could tax the rich at a rate of 80%, but that wouldn't change the growth of the deficit UNLESS we got spending in line with whatever tax policies we have (e.g. even if an 80% tax provided $1trillion in additional revenues, it does us no good if we have $4trillion in additional spending). It's not about the taxes alone, it's about how we spend given particular tax revenues - simple as that. So perhaps the first reason should have read - lowered taxes + increased spendi
GRIM.
As the author is likely aware, many people believe that it is _good_ for foreign countries to be owed money by the United States. Countries like China and Japan have a financial stake in the success of the U.S. economy because they are owed substantial amounts of money.
How much is $10,229,613,826,553.72. ?