Perot is back, charts and all, to take on U.S. deficit spending

That giant sucking sound? It’s all the data rushing to fill PerotCharts.com.

As the Associated Press reports today: "Billionaire former presidential candidate Ross Perot has started a website to highlight what he calls the ‘economic crisis’ facing the country because of deficit spending.

"The website announced Monday is . . . a play on Perot’s use of economic charts in political advertisements during his 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns."

If you saw his ads during those campaigns, it may be that you remember Perot -- or his caricature -- more than the details of his message, voiced in that thick Texas accent.

The 77-year-old Perot, who founded the tech services firm Electronic Data Systems, railed against the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992, predicting that it would produce a "giant sucking sound" as companies moved jobs from the U.S. to Mexico.

But federal deficit spending was his major peeve. The deficit reached a then-record $290 billion in fiscal 1992.

Maybe Perot helped the victor in the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton, get the message. Clinton presided over a dramatic shrinkage of the deficit; by 1996 it had been cut by nearly two-thirds from the ’92 level. By 1999 the Treasury was running a surplus.

But since 2001 the red ink has flowed heavily once again. The Congressional Budget Office projects a fiscal 2008 deficit of $357 billion, more than twice the 2007 level.

Perot’s message -- that we can’t keep spending like this -- actually is far more relevant today than it was in 1992, because of looming Social Security and Medicare costs for retiring baby boomers.

You just can’t help wondering where the guy has been for the last few years, as the deficits have continued to pile up. Why wait for an election year?

"The American people must wake up and face the reality that promises made in the past will soon bankrupt this nation," Perot says on the website. "Over time, our standard of living, our national security, our standing in the world and the value of our currency could all be threatened."

It’s also strange that he puts all of that in the future tense -- as if nothing bad has yet happened to Americans’ standard of living or to the dollar’s value.

Photo: Ross Perot testifying before a California Senate committee in 2002. Perot denied that his consulting company showed power suppliers how to manipulate California's energy market to drive up wholesale prices. Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Comments

[joe]

Ross,Ross,Ross where have you been?USA needs you so bad!Such a shame you dropped out of the race.You were right on target.

[Frank]

Oh, do I hope he runs this time.

I mean I really, really, really, really hope that he does. Run, Ross, Run! Teeheehee.

[s. kaye]

Mr Perot please run as an independent .... give us something to vote for... to hope for. As it is, all we have to look forward to is McBush or Osama Obama.

[jimmymac]

Ross, why in the hell did you not get the charts out for the 2004 election? We might have saved billions and been saved from listening to Bush screw up our economy and World standing the past 4 years.

[Clopper]

Perot's message needs to be shouted from the rooftops.

Will we ever see a day when the deficit gets more election coverage than flag pins?

[WILLIAM SPRINGER]

Ross where have you been bush has just about blown the whole us economy. We need you bad, I think it already too far gone.

[Judith Raybeck]

Well, Ross, you surely did tell us before Clinton signed NAFTA about "that big sucking sound." We're in trouble here - where are those WINGS OF EAGLES when we need them most??

[Sheldon]

Perot is right, the deficits will wreck the American economy. John McCain wants to continue the Bush deficit budgets,only Barack Obama as president can reverse the out of control Republican spending.

[Kenny]

Perot knows that fiat money exists ONLY because of deficit spending which benefits the central bankers who lend the money to governments to finance things they can't pay for, while collecting interest on the loans (which aren't back by anything -- that is LITERALLY what is stated in the legislation that created these central banks!!). Money from nothing, with zero risk (for the bankers -- they just create the money -- no dollar ever exists unless it was loaned first!!). It's obviously a dishonest system, and he is a patriot who wants to see it abolished, along with central banking.

The founders specifically made fiat money illegal in the Constitution -- and even these passages still exist today! They knew the history of people like the Rothschilds who control governments simply because they are in debt to the bankers! They were even tested twice (and prevailed) after the first two attempts at creating a US central bank. The third time unfortunately made it (google "Creature from Jekyll Island"). Deficit spending is how they continue to wield power over every person on earth. We have not had a free economy in at least a century, thanks to these scum. Rich get richer, middle class becomes poor. Even after all these bailouts, the politicians and money scientists will collude to make a seemingly attractive offer to the people to create a new currency (maybe 20 old dollars for every new one), but it will simply be the same thing in disguise unless we let them know that we understand the reality of money.

From the tone of this article, the authors surely do not understand the nature of fiat money.