It’s been 2 years since we first showed you guys this, but with the recent discussions at the US Capital, it seems now is a great time to pick it up again. Check out the “US Debt Clock” For a real-time animated view of the US Deficit and Revenue, and all the other numbers associated with it.
Click for Fullsize
This infographic showing a 3d rendering of a giant stack of $100 bills equal to the US debt, next to a soccer field, football field, and the statue of liberty, has been circling around the internet for the last week or so. Over at Business Insider they show some examples of how this Infographic is dangerous, borderline wrong.
The best defense of the infographic is: Well, $14 trillion is a gigantic number that’s hard to wrap your head around, and that’s true, but in the end, this kind of visualization just makes us more agog at the size, rather than putting them in meaningful context.
It’s a classic example of how difficult it is to create unbiased visualization. Just like the popular visualization shows how massive the debt is, their proposed replacements show that it’s not as bad as you might imagine. Neither one is technically “Wrong”, but each pushes a certain perspective of the data.
via Why This Popular US Debt Visualization Is One Of The Worst Things On The Internet Right Now.
Over at SeekingAlpha, they’ve updated their US National Debt visualizations and come up with some new charts like the one above. While at first it may not seem so bad, look closer at that left axis: It’s logarithmic.
The national debt data used in the charts above is for the United States’ total public debt outstanding, which includes the so-called intragovernmental holdings category, which mostly represents where surplus Social Security tax collections have gone since the early 1980s.
Looking at linear axes make for near right-angle graphs.
via Visualizing the U.S. National Debt: 1791-2010 – Seeking Alpha.
French media technology company “Thomson” has just filed for “Safeguard”, which is the French equivalent of Chapter 11, to provide time to vote on and implement a debt restructing plan.
Chief executive Frederic Rose said: “After 10 months of constructive discussions with a majority of our creditors, I am satisfied that we have now a clear timetable for closing our debt restructuring. [Safeguard] allows us to provide clarity and certainty to our employees, customers, suppliers and shareholders.”
Apparently they have been in discussions throughout most of 2009 with their creditors, and have a plan that will be voted on on December 21st. Why might you care? Thomson owns Technicolor, the parent company of MPC.
via Thomson gains protection from creditors | News | Broadcast.
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