Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market.

Has anyone noticed that the Romney advisor behind the ‘Romney Economic Boom’ is the guy responsible for one of the most spectacularly wrong and wildly optimistic economic predictions of the 1990s?

This week the Romney campaign was knocked on its heels by a study which suggested that Romney’s tax plan would – in addition to giving a windfall to the wealthiest Americans –increase taxes on 95% of Americans. So the guy who’s running for President to turn back President Obama’s supposedly high-taxing and deficit creating ways would actually raise taxes on virtually everyone and also explodethe deficit.

Who’s Kevin Hassett? Well, he’s none other than the coauthor of the spectacularly boomtime late 90s bestseller Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market. As TPM Reader WM points out, not only was the book amazingly wrong and basically assumed the tech boom was permanent, the whole concept was based on the idea that stocks should be valued on a “formula that double-counted earnings and dividends. A true classic in wingnut economics.”

Now, just to clarify: Dow 36,000.

This is the expert people are supposed to trust when we’re told that the economy will grow so fast that normal tax analysis pretty much won’t matter any more in the Romney Economic Boom?

Read More →