The Best Debt Clock in the USA

I just finished a new feature for my weblog: The Best Debt Clock in the USA.  It will be permanently displayed at the top right where it says "New Feature."  Tell your friends to visit this site any time of day or night to get an up-to-the-moment reading on our nation’s debt burden. 

All three numbers on the clock are updated two times per second: Debt, GDP, and Debt-to-GDP Ratio. 

Unsurprisingly, the first number on the clock, Debt, is hard to keep up with, because it’s increasing so fast—just like it does on all the other debt clocks out there.   

The second number on the clock, GDP, indicates the size of our economy.  It’s just like the debt number in one very important respect: it’s hard to keep up with, because it’s increasing so fast.  I bet you've never seen this before on anybody else's debt clock.

The third number, Debt-to-GDP Ratio, is the most important number on the clock.  It indicates our nation’s debt burden, and is very different from the other two numbers.  Why?  Because waiting for this number to tick up or down is worse than watching grass grow.  Nevertheless, I do recalculate it two times per second, just like the other two numbers. 

I hope you and your friends find this new feature useful in your discussions about the national debt.  All those other debt clocks, still ticking away, are now obsolete.  (Examples: here, here, and here.  Apparently, none of them bought my hypothesis that the national debt is not large at all, but is instead very, very tiny.)

[By the way, I'll recalibrate the clock each month, after the Bureau of Economic Analysis updates the GDP estimate.]

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End note:  The javascript code that runs the clock was written almost entirely by my son, the expert.  I, the pupil, did a few things such as name a variable or two; however, the clock wouldn’t exist without his help.  Many thanks to Steve from Steve.