A National Debt Clock

May be found on the WWW at the following URL:

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Or at the U.S. Treasury Public Debt site:

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opd.htm

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You can click on the links in the slide above to visit a National Debt Clock. Note that you will be leaving this web site and visiting another. Use the <BACK> button to return to this site once you have explored. You may need to enter the URL for the class site again if you explore very much.

The outstanding public debt as of 08/05/98 at 10:06:03 A.M. PDT was:

$5,540,475,350,217

Since $5.5 trillion is a number that is hard to comprehend, we can calculate the per capita national debt by dividing the population of the U.S. into the national debt figure. This provides an estimate of: $20,501.62.15 per person using the estimated population of the United States to be 270,245,708.

Now a lot of people get upset about this figure, but let’s take a look at the magnitude of the private debt in 1996 (latest figures available):

Households: $ 4.4443 trillion

Business: $ 4.3197 trillion

Total: $ 8.7640 trillion

The private sector does not have a balanced budget either.

Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, “Flow of Funds Accounts”, Quarterly Z.1 Release, D.3 Debt Outstanding by Sector, June 12, 1997.