He started with the government figure for total federal and direct loans outstanding at the end of fiscal year 2009 of $605 billion. Then he estimated how much private loan debt was outstanding as of June 2010, and added an increment to account for the growth in federal loan debt from September 2009 to June 2010.

He came up with a starting figure of $830 billion in private and federal loans outstanding as of June 2010, which he further estimated was growing by about $2,854 a second.