National Debt Clock Stopped! Was Running Backward!

[Towlie]

Here's an interesting September 7, 2000 article from CNN's archives at http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/09/07/debt.clock

National Debt Clock stops, despite trillions of dollars of red ink

Some found clock's change of direction confusing

September 7, 2000



The National Debt Clock after being shut down in New York on Thursday

NEW YORK -- The plug was pulled on the National Debt Clock, which has kept track of the federal government's red ink since the electronic billboard near Times Square was erected in 1989.

(...)

New York real estate developer Seymour Durst invented and bankrolled the clock to call attention to the then sky-rocketing national debt. He died in 1995. "My father's purpose in putting it up was to show the increase in the debt and to get people aware of the size of the debt and how it was growing," said his son Douglas Durst. "And the clock certainly was helpful in accomplishing that."

But the clock, which calculated the second-by-second increase in the debt based on data from the U.S. Treasury, began doing a strange thing this year. Rather than cranking higher, it started ticking in the opposite direction, shaving off roughly $30 a second at last count, with a newly frugal Washington to thank. Durst said that kind of confusion was far from his father's wish to inform the public on the ballooning debt. "I think it's sending the wrong message at this point," he said.

(...)

Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore has outlined a plan that he says would eliminate the debt by 2012.

Senior economic advisers to Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush agree with the principle of paying down the debt but have not committed to a specific date for eliminating it.

[TheWraith]

1. K&R... A very good thing to remember. nt

[CatholicEdHead]

2. I remember that

It was good back then, but it started again soon after W took office.

[Deja Q]

3. Erected? Wow. In retrospect, somebody got off real easy...

[lonestarnot]

6. It's still running here, so no, no they haven't.

http://www.lord2008.com/

[kimmylavin]

4. Why?

Why was letting the clock run backward "sending the wrong message"?
As long as people were informed that it was counting back from its "high", I would think it could be a point of pride as we watched it go backwards.

Of course, that's just crazytalk at this point...

[Davis_X_Machina]

5. It was the wrong message...

...because it indicated that spending on various public goods could be re-considered.

And those people hate anything that smacks of 'public' -- schools, roads, health, etc. etc.

Not to mention that if there's no new debt, there's no coupons to clip -- bad news for our rentier class.

[lonestarnot]

7. $9,469,070,547,537 and still running

http://www.lord2008.com/

[Towlie]

13. The thickness of a $100 bill is .0043 inches.

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/DeneneWilliams.shtml

A stack of $100 bills representing our National Debt would therefore have a height of 6,426.3 miles, or over 4/5 of the Earth's diameter.

The figure when they turned the clock off was $5,676,989,904,887, which represents 3,853 miles, or less than half of the Earth's diameter.

(Please rec this thread for me, folks! I've never made it to the front page.)

[lonestarnot]

14. I recommended your thread.

Another DUer wants to know what the national debt was when Bill Clinton took office. Do you know?

[pansypoo53219]

8. forget a business major to president

LET'S ELECT A FUCKING ACCOUNTANT.

[notesdev]

10. I second that motion! nt

[roamer65]

9. Soon...they would have had to do work on the clock anyway.

It's missing the "tens of trillions" digit. We're only a scant 500b away from it.

[Snarkoleptic]

11. But Uncle Dick told us that debt and deficit don't matter.

"Reagan proved deficits don't matter." - Citizen Dick

[sarcasmo]

12. Maybe Bush got his wish and the country is officially Bankrupt.