Dow 6000 (says Harry Dent)

on CNBC today with Ron Insana on the other side

I see this video (transcript) from 11/15/12 that he's predicting 5600 to 6000 on the Dow by 2015 and 3300 to 3800 on the Dow by 2020 to 2022 (0:55 into the video).

Here (3/31/11) he says Dow 3300.

Here (9/12/11) he says Dow 3000 (also 7/24/12)

So he's doubled his price target.

On the other hand, Seth Masters forecasts Dow 20,000.  (No, I never heard of him either.)

Wait, here's one from 2004, Dow 40,000 by 2009.

From Barron's, 9/17/11:

Prophets of doom and gloom are often criticized for being stopped clocks: bound to be right, but just twice a day. Financial-newsletter writer and best-selling author Harry S. Dent Jr., by contrast, can lay claim to being a prophet of boom or gloom, depending on the circumstances.

Dent is as comfortable calling for Dow 35,000, as he did 13 years ago, as he is forecasting Dow 3800 now. His 1998 book, The Roaring 2000s: Building the Wealth and Lifestyle You Desire in the Greatest Boom in History, was a New York Times best seller. Its bleaker companion, The Great Crash Ahead: Strategies for a World Turned Upside Down, co-written with Rodney Johnson, will be published this week.

Based on these and similar titles (see below), Dent swings for the fences. But not always with grand-slam results.

Why is CNBC helping this guy sell books?

From wikipedia:

In the late 1980s, Dent forecast that the Japanese economy, then the darling of the world, would soon enter a slowdown that would last more than a decade. In the early 1990s, he predicted that the DOW would reach 10k. Both of these predictions were met with much skepticism, and yet both eventually came to pass.

In 2000, based on his forecast that economic growth would continue throughout the 2000s, Dent predicted that the DOW would reach 40k, a prediction which was repeated in his 2004 book. In his book, he also predicted the NASDAQ would reach 13-20k. In late 2006 he revised his forecasts to much lower levels, estimating the Dow would reach 16-18k and the NASDAQ 3-4k. In January 2006, he predicted that the DOW would reach 14-15k by the end of the year. It ended 2006 at 12,463, 11% below the lower end of his prediction. It ended 2007 at 13,264, again significantly lower than Dent's revised prediction of 15,000 by early 2008. Since then, the Dow crossed 14,000 in late 2007 before retreating.

His 2011 book goes on to suggest consumer spending will begin to plummet in 2012 with the Dow bottoming out somewhere between 3,000 and 5,600 in 2014. After hitting bottom, stocks will experience a mini-rally in 2015-2017 before falling into a final bottom during the 2019-2023 period, when the 45-50 age group troughs because the U.S. birth rate reached its own low in 1973.

OK, he's been right before (and also wrong).

P.S. Not to be confused with Harvey Dent.