A Short Reprieve For New Yorker’s Ducking the Debt Clock

SEPTEMBER 4, 2017

Each year when I visit New York I end up walking past the US National Debt Clock, which has a rather sobering effect on me. It displays the total US debt. A number too big to truly comprehend, always rising quickly, ticking away. It has a mesmerizing impact on me and anyone who takes the time to really contemplate the enormity of the America’s financial burden.

The number won’t even fit into my HP 12c financial calculator, which can just handle billions but not trillions. In fact, according to New York Post columnist, Steve Cuozzo, in 1995 space for another number needed to be added to the clock.

Since its installation in 1989, by owner and New York developer, the late Seymour Durst, when the total US debt was $3 trillion, it has grown almost 7% pa to total $19 trillion. The more comprehensible number is the portion each American family owes and that’s $168,228 up $5,000 or just over 3% since I was there exactly one year earlier in 2016.

May 2016

May 2017

If you want a reality check then you might ponder Warren Buffet’s company, Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire’s current cash is also ticking up and it is now around $100 billion. What a contrast? The most successful investor saving money and the most successful country borrowing money. This is surely the conundrum of life and finance.

That’s capitalism in the self proclaimed “Greatest nation in the world”, for you. There will always be losers if there are winners.

Cuozzo says the clock is coming down and being relocated to fashionable Bryant Park, one block away. It makes way for changes to the existing building. According to Cuozzo, Durst vowed the clock would remain “as long as the debt or the city lasts”. He added, “if it bothers people then it is working.”