The Dollar Is Dead!

A watched clock never moves — unless it's the National Debt Clock.

In fact, the digital counter has been moving so much that it recently ran out of digits to display the ballooning figure: $10,150,603,734,720, or roughly $10.2 trillion, as of Saturday afternoon.

The clock was put up by the late real estate mogul Seymour Durst in 1989 when the U.S. government's debt was a mere $2.7 trillion, and was even turned off during the 1990s when the debt decreased.

It will be replaced in 2009 with a new clock, said Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for the Durst Organization. The new clock will be able to track debt up to a quadrillion dollars, which is a '1' followed by 15 zeros.

In the meantime, the '1' from "$10.2" has been moved left to the LCD square once occupied solely by the digital dollar sign. A non-digital, improvised dollar sign has been pasted next to the '1.'

The current clock had enough digits to measure the amount of money owed by the U.S. government until debt recently hit $10 trillion. Since then, more eyes have been on the fixture near touristy Times Square.


Below the amount of the national debt on the clock is another row of figures: "YOUR Family share." As of Saturday afternoon, the $86,023 fit properly into the respective LCD squares.

Do NOT expect a check from us here at Society Sex. We live humbly on a meager diet of air and fabulousness!