So let’s just put this up front: Nobody really knows what the f*ck is going on with the economy. But still, there are some “experts” that really shouldn’t even be allowed to speak or write or exist.

Remember the heady days almost precisely a decade ago of the dot com boom? Thanks to new technology and supersmart economists the world’s advanced economies had little to worry about in the way of recessions or downturns. Sure there might be a hiccup here or there but the bad old days of economic cycles were a thing of the past. Our bright new future had arrived.

There were plenty of purveyors of that snake oil including many of the most “prestigious” business publications and media outlets (The Economist being a notable exception) but none quite so ostentatious as the authors of the grandly-named tome Dow 36,000. Remember that one? Authors James K. Glassman and Kevin A. Hassett published their book in late 1999 when the Dow was just three months away from hitting it’s (then) all-time high of 11,750.

Glassman and Hassett argued that despite the very rapid run-up in stock prices stocks were in truth undervalued and therefore cheap. There cockiness was on display in the first few paragraphs. Let us reminisce:

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose from below 800 to above 11,000, Wall Street analysts and financial journalists were warned that stocks were dangerously overvalued and that investors were caught up in an insane euphoria. They were wrong.

Stocks were undervalued in the 1980s and early 1990s, and they are undervalued now. Stock prices could double, triple, or even quadruple tomorrow and still not be too high.

Market analysts and media pundits have also persistently warned that stocks are extremely risky. About this they are wrong too. Over the long term stocks in the aggregate are actually less risky than Treasury bonds or even bank certificates of deposit. Although the experts may not be very good at predicting what the market will do, they are brilliant at scaring people — not out of malice but out of a profound misunderstanding of stock prices. Whatever their intentions, they have performed a terrible disservice to millions of investors by frightening them away from the market.

Stocks are now, we believe, in the midst of a one-time-only rise to much higher ground — to the neighborhood of 36,000 for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. After they complete this historic ascent, owning them will still be profitable but the returns will decline. You won’t be able to make as much money from them each year. We believe that in the meantime, however, astounding profits will be made.

Admittedly it is easy sport making fun of bad predictions (I insisted, privately, that Al D’Amato would beat Chuck Schumer in their 1998 Senate race) but this one is worth special notice because these guys defended their theory in 2002 even as the Dow hovered around 7,500.

They wrote:

Certainly, Dow 36,000 has been put to a severe test. The U.S. has been through a lot in three years: the impeachment of a president, a disputed election for the first time in a century, the first attack on the U.S. mainland since the War of 1812, the first recession in 10 years, corporate scandals and a zealous political response that could create unintended consequences. What’s remarkable is that, in spite of this, price/earnings ratios have remained higher than historic averages–exactly what we expected.

But what about this 36000 business? If the Dow were there today, one could say that the upward pressure from the demystification of stock ownership had subsided. Since it is not, and there is no convincing evidence that the earnings history of the past 200 years is suddenly irrelevant, stocks are still a very good buy. The best way to partake in a rising market is through buying and holding diversified stock portfolios. But some people are impatient.

Wow! That’s some hubris boys. Even better they go on to say that the only theories that had been debunked by the huge drop in stocks since their book had been released as those of their critics.

So why bring all this up now? Well, Hassett is back and he’s now spouting fantastically absurd theories about Barack Obama and his economic plans thanks to Bloomberg News.

In an on-line column Hassett wrote on Monday that like Johnson’s War on Poverty and Nixon’s War on Drugs, Obama was launching a War on Business. Hassett then spins out a “Manchurian Candidate” story about how it is as if one of America’s enemies “had spent years preparing a Manchurian Candidate to destroy the U.S. economy once elected.”

Hassett goes on to relay the now-standard conservative critique of Obama’s plans (ending tax loopholes for corporations is bad, carbon cap-and-trades are bad, any non-private health care changes are bad) and concludes, “It’s clear that President Obama wants the best for our country. That makes it all the more puzzling that he would legislate like a Manchurian Candidate.”

There are certainly valid arguments to be made challenging Obama’s proposals and plans but having a thoroughly discredited hack like Hassett make silly ones in their stead only weakens those honest conservative challenges to Obama’s ideas. And Bloomberg giving Hassett space to do so only makes this business media company look ridiculous.