The US National Debt Clock in New York’s Times Square, as of 9 October 2008. Photo by flickr user tpauly under a CC license.

The US National Debt Clock – a fixture at New York’s Times Square for over twenty years – has recently run out of numbers to display the correct level of national debt which now exceeds a mind-boggling $10 trillion.

As a temporary fix, the digital slot where the dollar sign is usually displayed has been requisitioned for the now required 14th digit. As of today, the US national debt is $10,282,260,284,690. It was $1 trillion less than that only a few months before. As if that wasn’t ludicrous enough, a new clock is now being manufactured to cope with US debt figures in quadrillions should the need arise!