#National debt clock free#

With debt at 68.1 per cent of gross domestic product, Germany is one of the few EU members that approach the 60-per cent limit set in the Treaty of Maastricht, along with Lithuania, Estonia, Luxembourg, Finland and the Netherlands. The bonanza is expected to continue over the four years ahead to the tune of €30 billion according to Peter Altmaier, the man now running the finance ministry.Īs coalition talks with the Social Democrats get under way, politicians see the cash as an opportunity to lavish gifts on their bases in the form of tax cuts, higher spending or public investments. In fact, the country has in recent years booked budget surpluses running into billions. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her former finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble enshrined balancing the books at the heart of their programme from 2014. The BdSt set up the clock at the entrance to its central Berlin headquarters in 1995. 'This policy that harms future generations has fortunately now been stopped.'ĭebt levels have in fact been falling since 2013 to around €23,827 per person now.īut Mr Holznagel said the effect would only be reflected in national and regional budgets from this year. Its president Reiner Holznagel said: 'Only recently the federal and state governments bore responsibility for this policy of piling up debt.' Granted, at the current rate of decline, it would take more than 800 years to bring the total debt of €2 trillion down to zero.īut the Federation of German Taxpayers (BdSt), the group that set up the digital clock, nonetheless hailed the turnaround as a good sign for Europe's biggest economy. ��We��re not happy at the impact we��re making with this one,�� he said.Germany’s “debt clock”, which is run by tax lobbyists to shame the government into fiscal discipline, is running backwards for the first time in its 22-year history.ĭisplayed prominently in Berlin, the clock now shows public coffers moving into the black at a rate of €78 per second. The latest plan is for yet another replacement, involving a larger scale signboard.

#National debt clock free#

��When it became clear what was going to happen, our first thought was to free up the digital square occupied by the dollar sign so that we could cope with a 14th digit,�� Mr Durst said.

Instead the debt continued to rise at such a rate that the once unthinkable total of $10 trillion veered from alarmist fantasy into the realm of impending reality. In ��04, the old clock was torn down and replaced with a newer model which had been modified to run backwards should such a happy necessity arise. The curtain was raised in ��02 and the digital readout flickered back to life showing a national debt of $6.1 trillion with the numerals whizzing round faster than ever. He only had to wait two years as the Bush presidency coincided with an upsurge in borrowing. ��We��ll have it ready in case things start turning around, which I��m sure they will,�� Durst said at the time.

The clock was covered with a red, white and blue curtain, but not dismantled.