ooh, the goofy usdebtclock site
Hey fake coach
tell us what you know about that site and it's source data
If it's from the CBO I may just want to call it horseshit...you know just to be consistent your prior beliefs.
If it's not even from a source like that then just tell us the source, who site it is, where their info is from etc.
I wouldn't have bothered to mention it but I know stuff like that is important to you
There are a couple similar websites that have these national "debt clocks" on them. Some of them don't list a source, but for those that do, it looks like they get their data from the US Treasury, which typically reports it daily (
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current). Then they can just use the budget deficit, as well as outlook provided by the government on future debt levels, to determine how fast to increase it on their clock. It isn't actually going up at the exact rate shown on the clock, they just normalize the data over time based on the estimated increase. See below for an explanation:
What determines the speed of the clock?
Some days the debt actually goes down, and others it goes up extra fast. Since no one knows what it will do on any given day we just show it increasing at its average rate, because that’s the best guess. But what average rate?
The Office of Management and Budget at the White House predicts the “Gross Federal Debt” for the next few years. At the end of the fiscal year 2005, (Sept. 30 2005) they list the debt at $8,031.4 billion. They predict it will be $676 billion higher at the end of the next fiscal year. That is the average rate of increase per year assumed by the clock.