Debt Watcher USA

Using the latest published data from the federal government and with some proprietary calculations, Debt Watcher USA dynamically reports “Debt Held by the Public”, “Intragovernmental Holdings” and “Total Public Debt Outstanding” across the six areas listed below. Debt Watcher is an example of a multi-threaded Android application demonstrating simultaneous processing of high speed display refreshes inconjunction with very slow web site dependent requests. Specifically designed to run on all Android phone and tablet devices beginning with Android 1.6 (API Level 4).

1. Last Year’s Actual: Looking back 1 year, represents the date and actual amounts published by the U.S. Treasury as keyed from the Latest Actual date. The 1 year ago date is obtained using a precise to-the-millisecond calendar calculation and can vary due to falling on weekends or holidays.

2. Latest Actual: Represents the most current date and actual amounts published by the U.S. Treasury and is normally a few days old.

3. Real-Time Estimate: At this exact moment, represents today’s date and current time showing the calculated amounts based on the difference of time between the Latest Actual and the current time multiplied by the “rate-of-growth” (described below) and added to the Latest Actual amounts. The calculation is updated dynamically every 100 to 1,000 milliseconds and selectable in the Settings menu.

4. Real-Time Accrual: At this exact moment, represents today’s date and current time showing the calculated amounts accrued since the Last Actual date, i.e., the difference of time between the Latest Actual until right now multiplied by the "rate-of-growth". The calculation is updated dynamically every 100 to 1,000 milliseconds and selectable in the Settings menu.

5. Next Year’s Estimate: Looking forward exactly 1 year from the Latest Actual date, represents the calculated amount of new debt anticipated in the next calendar year, based on the "rate-of-growth" derived from the past calendar year, plus the Latest Actual amount.

6. Next Year’s Accrual: Looking forward exactly 1 year from the Latest Actual date, represents the calculated amount of new debt anticipated over the next calendar year, based on the "rate-of-growth" derived from the past calendar year.

Rate-of-growth: (Latest Actual Amount – Last Year’s Actual Amount) / (Latest Actual Amount Date – Last Year’s Actual Date) or the dollar amount per millisecond between last year and this year. Time calculations are made with a mathematical precision of 20 positions past the decimal point and begin at the end of the day, i.e., 11:59:59 p.m. for actual data. Estimated data calculations uses the time right now.

Since the government doesn’t publish debt data on the weekends or holidays, Debt Watcher dynamically estimates the debt amounts based on the rate of debt growth in the past year accounting for leap time (days, hours, minutes and seconds) and time zone conformity to provide better accuracy. All estimated amounts incorporate the Washington D.C. time zone into their time calculations and translate the time back to your local time zone. The Real-Time Estimate and Real-Time Accrual values are updated in real-time based on the debt rate calculation.

USAGE: Debt Watcher requires Internet access to retrieve on an hourly basis newly published debt data from the federal government web site and can be enabled / disabled in the Settings menu under “Enable data updates”. A manual refresh option is also provided on the Menu and will perform the data update transparent to the automatic updates. Each inquiry utilizes less than 500 bytes of Internet bandwidth. Also traps the Back keystroke in the Settings activity to test for proper page exit.

Both the Real-Time Estimate and Real-Time Accrual display groups on the report view update dynamically every 100 to 1,000 milliseconds, and can be changed in Settings under “Refresh Interval”.

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(install app and refer to Help menu item for more information)