Dow 36000

UPDATE: It occurs to me today (as the Dow drops below 10,000) that one way to defend Hassett's book is to say that the title is a typo. What they meant to write was Dow 3,600. Now that would have been prescient.

....

Worth noting today, when the Dow fell nearly 800 points to 10,365, that one of John McCain's senior economic advisers is Kevin Hassett, co-author of the now infamous Dow 36,000. This book, published in 1999 (and now available used on Amazon for 81 cents), predicted that the Dow would reach 36,000 within a few years.

And he has an explanation for the current crisis - it's all the Democrats fault. In truth, the Dems probably shouldn't have opposed that particular bill in that particular committee but they didn't even have a senate majority in 2005! It is an extraordinary stretch to blame the entire financial crisis on one procedural vote by the minority senators on a Senate committee. (One might point out that the Republicans have controlled the White House and had majorities in both houses for almost all of the last eight years, but that would seem churlish). But this is exactly the kind of semi-magical thinking typical of folks like Hassett. To this day he will not repudiate his pathetic Dow 36,000 book. And this is one of the main economics guys advising McCain. God help us if he's elected.

[And yes I am revisiting my pessimistic election predictions in light of all that's happening but am not quite ready to dare to dream yet]