Speaking of really wild optimism, note that the authors of "Dow: 36,000" were at the conservative end of the bull-market visionary book-sellers crowd. Thus Dow:40,000 and Dow:100,000 (by 2020 no less).
Chiliasm, I think is the word to describe all this. Chiliastic numerology. And what else but a standard chiliastic cult's revelation-postponement (see here for similarly failed prophecy) is shown in this 2006 article, where the authors of both 36,000 and 100,000 remain confident in their predictions - its just that they were off a bit:
Glassman, 59, defends "Dow 36,000's" original premise as well. The prediction -- that the Dow would triple by 2005 -- is still valid, he says, although he's pushed the deadline out to 2021... Glassman and Kadlec say their out-of-print books, offered for sale on Amazon.com for as little as one cent, are still relevant. "Dow 36,000" held that stocks were safer than bonds over the long term. When investors recognized this, the Dow would triple in value, the authors wrote. "There's nothing that's occurred over the past few years that's changed our minds about the original thesis," said Glassman, who writes a syndicated investing column and is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
Glassman and Kadlec say their out-of-print books, offered for sale on Amazon.com for as little as one cent, are still relevant.
"Dow 36,000" held that stocks were safer than bonds over the long term. When investors recognized this, the Dow would triple in value, the authors wrote.
"There's nothing that's occurred over the past few years that's changed our minds about the original thesis," said Glassman, who writes a syndicated investing column and is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
(As a McCain advisor Hassett is shameless though, he has recently complained of voting fraud by the Democrats! Totally shameless.
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Speaking of failed prophesies however, my all time favorite and a book of historical significance, surely, is without a doubt, David Lereah's "Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?: The Boom Will Not Bust and Why Property Values Will Continue to Climb Through the End of the Decade - And How to Profit From Them (2005)".
This awesomely titled book is by the author of The Rules for Growing Rich : Making Money in the New Information Economy (2000), where he was plugging Internet stocks a few months before the dotcom crash. Undoubtedly this man is the epitome of timely financial advice. A true oracle of the New Gilded Age.
The optimism of the realtor was matched, according to Amazon (I assume it was a blurb?) by David Berson, Chief Economist at Fannie May who had this to say about the book: "An important book, whether you agree with the author (as I do) that housing will remain an excellent investment or are convinced that home prices are poised for a plunge, David Lereah lays out a compelling vision of housing as a continuing positive investment--and how you can profit from real estate if you already own the home you live in, are looking to move from rental housing to an owner-occupied home, or want to use real estate as an investment."
Note on the Amazon page for the Real Estate Rapture book, the number and ferocity of comments it has attracted, and especially this gem of a recommendation.
The author would wish he could change the title and that people would go beyond the title to the substance of the book:
"Obviously I would change the title," says David Lereah, the former chief economist of the National Association of Realtors and author of "Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust - And How You Can Profit From It," published in paperback in February 2006. "There are places in the book where I actually say the boom is not healthy. But people don't read the book, and they just look at the title and they criticize it."
I love this prophets of profits shred to bits thing though. So much so, that I think I might make a diary out of this comment :-) The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake
BBC NEWS | Business | Darling spending plan 'misguided'
The government's plan to spend its way out of the looming recession is "misguided and discredited", say leading economists. Chancellor Alistair Darling wants to bring forward spending on key state-funded projects to kick-start economic recovery. But a group of 16 economists say it risks damaging private sector recovery.
The government's plan to spend its way out of the looming recession is "misguided and discredited", say leading economists.
Chancellor Alistair Darling wants to bring forward spending on key state-funded projects to kick-start economic recovery.
But a group of 16 economists say it risks damaging private sector recovery.
All very serious. And these clowns did such a good job of predicting the recent past that their credibility sails on, resolute and undented. Naturally.
The City and its financial services industry must be much like Wall Street in the US--a giant leech attached to the body politic. Heat from the glowing embers of that sector will cause the leech to let go--eventually. The question is how much public debt will have to be assumed before that happens. Let all of these financial service firms die. There is nothing that can be done to stop it. The only question is how much of our wealth to put on the funeral pyre. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Cost of crash: $2,800,000,000,000
Snippets of this interview were repeated constantly throughout the day.
Howard Dean said the first thing Democrats needed to do was turn up. He was right. Money is a sign of Poverty - Culture Saying
1) There's a strong concentration on technicalities at the expense of the political message being pushed.
- For example a lot of concentration on the technical notions that a cut in low earner tax (e.g. a NI holiday) would feed into the economy quicker than infrastructure:
- No mention of the role of infrastructure contracts in slowing the collapse of construction employment.
- No mention that infrastructure spending provides more stimulus than tax cuts.
- No mention that in a highly indebted environment, low end tax cuts are as vulnerable as other money supply measures to "pushing on a string" problems.
2) Most of all however, no mention, as you note that they wouldn't actually be proposing a tax cut for the low end, let alone a tax cut for the low end only.
3) The allocative efficiency argument is so depressing, as we face a crisis built up out of the misallocation of resources by the market over a long period.
>The right-wing tendencies of the British blogosphere
I think I might make a diary out of this comment :-)
Yay!
