Of course, it's conceivable that Perot has drastically changed his investment strategy, liquidating his two billion in tax-exempt municipal bonds and pouring the money into industrial America. But, if he has done this, there is no evidence for it. He's pretty shrewd. To argue that Perot's deficit reduction campaign made Clinton flinch and sent the bond market soaring is to assume that domestic fiscal policy makes a difference to the bond market. Nowadays, Republicans are saying no.
Interest rates have gone down everywhere, they point out.
In Japan, after the announcement of a big government spending initiative, interest rates turned up sharply this spring. In August, French money market rates rose from 8.5 to 9.25 percent. Spain, Denmark and Portugal have all seen rates go up and bond prices go down. Instead of being a couple of hundred million ahead, Perot could have easily lost a couple of hundred million. Given Perot's position as the nation's number one deficit hawk, his famous charts illustrating imminent fiscal Gotterdamerung, his choice of John White, Carter's conservative budget director as his principle economic advisor, and Warren Rudman, the Senate's chief deficit basher, as the first name to surface publicly as his possible running mate, you could be forgiven for interpreting the entire campaign as a budget reduction scheme.