MOUNTAIN OF DEBT: Rising Debt May Be Next Crisis

The debt soared with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and economic stimulus spending under President George W. Bush and now Obama.

The soaring national debt is recorded on the National Debt Clock in New York, Friday, July 3, 2009....

The soaring national debt is recorded on the National Debt Clock in New York, Friday, July 3, 2009. Already complicating efforts by President Barack Obama and Congress to cope with the worst recession in decades, economists warn that the mountain of debt easily could become the next full-fledged economic crisis without firm action from Washington. (AP Photo/Yanina Manolova)

(AP)

The odometer-style "debt clock" near Times Square — put in place in 1989 when the debt was a mere $2.7 trillion — ran out of numbers and had to be shut down when the debt surged past $10 trillion in 2008.

The clock has since been refurbished so higher numbers fit. There are several debt clocks on Web sites maintained by public interest groups that let you watch hundreds, thousands, millions zip by in a matter of seconds.

The debt gap is "something that keeps me awake at night," Obama says.

He pledged to cut the budget "deficit" roughly in half by the end of his first term. But "deficit" just means the difference between government receipts and spending in a single budget year.

This year's deficit is now estimated at about $1.85 trillion.

Deficits don't reflect holdover indebtedness from previous years. Some spending items — such as emergency appropriations bills and receipts in the Social Security program — aren't included, either, although they are part of the national debt.

The national debt is a broader, and more telling, way to look at the government's balance sheets than glancing at deficits.

According to the Treasury Department, which updates the number "to the penny" every few days, the national debt was $11,518,472,742,288 on Wednesday.

The overall debt is now slightly over 80 percent of the annual output of the entire U.S. economy, as measured by the gross domestic product.

By historical standards, it's not proportionately as high as during World War II, when it briefly rose to 120 percent of GDP. But it's still a huge liability.

Also, the United States is not the only nation struggling under a huge national debt. Among major countries, Japan, Italy, India, France, Germany and Canada have comparable debts as percentages of their GDPs.