A digital clock in Times Square keeps a running tab on the nation’s spending spree. If you want to see something that spins faster than a gas pump meter, you can watch the IOU's pile up in real time at http://www.usdebtclock.org.
On 07/26/2010 at 9:49 a.m. Central Standard Time, the debt meter clocked in at exactly $13,240,427,864,713, approximately $3 trillion more than when the Hope-Floater took office. That's 3 plus a dozen 0's, which is why he's called "Zero."
A minute later, the meter notched up another $3,012,717. Gone without a trace!
The national debt is too vast to fathom. But when it’s reduced to smaller chunks on a more personal scale, we can start to measure its impact. Like the $500 I paid for my first auto, a pre-owned Ford Fairlane. Now I couldn’t get a good set of rims for that amount, but I still get the concept of $500. Can I grasp trillions? No, but thanks for asking.
Loftier minds are better equipped to see the big picture of big numbers. Senator Everett Dirksen, a long-time beltway squatter, allegedly observed, “A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money."
If a billion is real money, then a trillion crosses a threshold into the outer limits where it's transformed into surreal paper. Now that I think about it, the national debt is in a weird cosmos. And it’s not real money either. It's funny money – it giggles while it goes. Makes y’wonder who else is laughing.
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