US Debt Clock = talking numbers

You've seen the real, three-dimensional debt clock, perhaps, at least in pictures. Here's a two-dimensional one that gives the situation in living color:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/index.html

The hugest number I can seem to find on it is for "Currency and credit derivatives" -- at this moment about $760.5 trillion bucks. It's advancing about $2.5 million per second. How long till we're talking quadrillions?

Note (far right on the chart) that the US population is now estimated at 312 million plus a whole lot of change! That should alarm us as much as any dollar figure, because the more people, the more crowding, smog, traffic jams, welfare, urban blight et al. It wasn't always thus, but it is now.

Wasn't it just a few years ago they announced the birth (or arrival) of the 300 millionth ameriKan? From this chart

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Population

.......it appears it was back around 2005. Note (especially if you're under 40 years old) that even liberal Wikipedia admits the US population is expected to pas FOUR HUNDRED MILLION by the half-century mark. Years aren't as short as they used to be, and to any young readers out there the 38 years between now and then will seem in retrospect like 38 months. You who likely will be there then, ponder well the ramifications.

At the bottom edge of the chart is a link on "Gold supply/demand". Mysteriously, the US shows a gold demand of 7.2 million ounces, but that is barely twice tiny Vietnam's figure of 3.6 mil.

Stray note on the 3-D debt clock in Manhattan:

The clock was temporarily switched off from 2000 to 2002 due to the debt actually falling during that period.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_clock

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