US debt clock runs out of figures

The US digital debt clock has run out of figures. I don´t suppose anyone saw it coming that there would ever be any more than 10 trillion dollars of debt in the US, even though they started with out with 2.7 trillion when they erected it in 1989. Now they have to use the space used by the $ sign to handle the extra digit.
Now that there is a 700 billion dollar bailout plan in action, it´ll probably be even more. Can someone explain why the US isn´t a third world country yet?