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NEW YORK (AP)--Time is running out for the National Debt Clock.
For more than a decade, the stark green sign has chronicled the second-to-second growth in the U.S. debt from its perch atop a building near Times Square in New York City.
Often the debt was rising so rapidly that the last several numbers were blurred, reminding passers-by of a serious economic problem usually expounded upon by pundits.
These days, the sign is hardly the clarion call it used to be. Its numbers barely budge and the national debt has actually decreased since the beginning of the year, what with these strange phenomena of budget surpluses and the first buybacks of government debt in 70 years.
So, the owners of the sign are pulling the plug.
Barring an unexpected reversal in Washington's new-found sense of fiscal responsibility, the National Debt Clock will go dark Sept. 7, the birthday of the man who invented it, the late Manhattan developer Seymour Durst.
"It was put up to focus attention on the increasing national debt, and it's served its purpose," says Seymour's son, Douglas Durst, who now runs the...