Harry Dent on Coast to Coast AM

Harry Dent was on Coast to Coast with George Noory tonight, lamenting the terrible state of the economy. Mr Dent just published a book: The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Crash Following the Greatest Boom in History. Mr. Dent gave a convincing argument-stating several times about how "we have been predicting" the real estate, banking, and economic crashes that have been happening. Not only that, but Mr. Dent's firm can predict boom and bust cycles all the way out to 2036. Its easy you see, Mr. Dent is a demographer and you just apply demographics to figure out what's going to happen. Don't listen to what any economists have to say. Dent says the economy will rebound a bit in the summer, and then there'll be another stock market crash. 

We're all interested in the economy these days, so I followed the discussion with apt attention. 

After it was over I was curious. I looked up Mr. Dent on Amazon, and found his previous book: The Next Great Bubble Boom: How to Profit from the Greatest Boom in History: 2006-2010. 

Ooops. Looks like Dent's previous proclamations aren't as accurate as he claimed on Coast to Coast. I think this review says all you need to know about Mr. Dent's ability to give economic forecasts:

"Page 73 of this book reads "Our best projection for the Nasdaq is about 13,000 around the end of this decade (2010), but it is possible we could see as high as 20,000." Let's see, the Nasdaq made its way up to 2861 by Oct. 31, 2007 and now sits at 1316 as of Nov. 21, 2008. Now today, I see this guy on TV saying he predicted the current market meltdown and has written a new book due out in Jan. 2009 entitled "The Great Depression Ahead". What a joke."