WASHINGTON, D.C. In a first exercise of new powers granted to it by the student loan forgiveness bill, the Federal Reserve will use an emergency declaration of “Double Daylight Savings Time” to set back the National Debt Clock, which has run out of digits.
“The National Debt Clock has been a handy tool by which ordinary Americans could sort of understand how much debt they’d be handing down to their great-great-great-great-grandchildren,” said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. “Right now, it’s just scaring the beejezzus out of everybody.”
The National Debt Clock is located in New York City and was first set at $2.7 trillion in 1989, with an automatic counter that increased the amount as Congress spent money on stuff like the National Australian Rules Football Hall of Fame in Ossawatomie, Kansas, and the Ida Ferber Museum of Botulism-Damaged Canned Goods in Keokuk, Iowa. As the national debt passed ten trillion dollars last month, the clock ran out of digits, forcing the need for “double” daylight savings time, according to Yellen, who will rewind the clock from $37 trillion to $999 billion at 2 a.m. Sunday morning if she can stay up that late.
A “trillion” is a really big number that is larger than a billion but smaller than a quadrillion, according to Minna Costa, a psychologist who works to control the spread of Liberal Arts Disease, the delusion that all big numbers are the same. “If we could get people to understand how big a trillion really is, it might help, but so many former liberal arts majors get stuck if you hand them $5.06 to pay for a $4.96 sandwich and ask for a dime back.”
Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Our Friends, the Fed.”
I’m going to give that a try myself next weekend!