According to CNN:
The National Debt Clock in New York City has run out of digits to record the growing figure.
As a short-term fix, the digital dollar sign on the billboard-style clock near Times Square has been switched to a figure—the “1” in $10 trillion. It’s marking the federal government’s current debt at about $10.2 trillion.
The Durst Organization says it plans to update the sign next year by adding two digits. That will make it capable of tracking debt up to a quadrillion dollars.
The late Manhattan real estate developer Seymour Durst put the sign up in 1989 to call attention to what was then a $2.7 trillion debt.
I was in the former Yugoslavia in the late 80’s/early 90s, just as they’d had to devalue their currency. My then-boyfriend and I were mystified whenever locals tried to explain to us that we needed to add three zeroes or subtract them, who knew which, from whatever was on the bill. Either our disgusting room cost us $10 or $100, we were never quite sure. Everywhere we went, guys with unibrows and “Natasha-and-Boris” accents were pssst-ing at us and going “change mon-ye? change mon-ye?”
You see, back in those long gone days, US currency was the bomb. Now it’s just a bomb, I guess. Will we eventually become the slightly scary guys desperately trying to get foreigners to change their good money for our lousy stuff?
I’ll have to check with the ex-boyfriend; maybe that was Hungary. Either way, we seem to be going the same way. Backwards.
