Katie Couric's Notebook: Sign Of The Times

Since 1989, the National Debt Clock has been a fixture in Manhattan's Times Square. After you've dropped a cool $200 on a Broadway Show, a glimpse of its ominous ticker might deter you from that $20 nightcap.

And now, that clock has run out of numbers. Our national debt, now at $10.2, is one digit larger than the spots available on the sign.

When real estate mogul Seymour Durst created the clock back in 1989, the debt was at $2.7 trillion. Since 2003, it has grown by half a trillion each year, and the bailout Congress just signed will likely kick that number up even higher by the end of 2008.

But rather than retiring the debt sign, the Dursts will redesign it to include enough spaces for a quadrillion.

Expanding the credit line when money is tight - isn't that how we got into this mess in the first place? The debt clock literally is a sign of the times.