Rating: 
Summary: Right on!
Review: In his book, Mr Dent pretty accurately foretold the current economic boom we are in currently. His central hypothesis is extremely believable, and easy to understand. He also forecasts a coming major depression that follows this boom. I hope he updates this book! Timing is everything. Caveat: there is a lot of the vertical pronoun used throughout this book. I still recommend it for any investor.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating hypothesis. Read the first 30 pages!
Review: In his book, Mr Dent pretty accurately foretold the current economic boom we are in currently. His central hypothesis is extremely believable, and easy to understand. He also forecasts a coming major depression that follows this boom. I hope he updates this book! Timing is everything. Caveat: there is a lot of the vertical pronoun used throughout this book. I still recommend it for any investor.
Rating: 
Summary: Where's Gen X or Silent Generation???
Review: It was interesting book and having read it in 2001, I can see that many of his simple forecasts in the 90's are often on the mark. However there are many flaws that reflects his boomer navel-gazing. Why, I wonder, did Dent never chart the population surges of Silent Generation or Generation X? Moreover, where did all the immigrants disappeared to? Did they fell into the black hole after entering America? What about the inner-city blacks with unusally high crime-imprisoned rate? What about the endless resources from nanotech, biotech, and outer space? What about the cracking of welfare states now that communism is no longer a threat? I am sure that if Dent have charted all these information, the picture will look striking different.For example, many boomers prided themselves on being "largest generation". Based on simple birth rate, this is correct, but the picture is incomplete. The busters or Gen X may have smaller birth rate, but far higher immigrantion since the 60's, particulary after Vietnam War when many young people and children escaped dictatorships from Asia and Eastern Europe. Taken together, the Gen X is actually a far larger generation in simple numbers than so-called Boomers. At same time, it also have smaller capital to start business with and must struggle with crack-up of welfare state at same time. Yet, the Xers are more likely and more willing to start businesses and freelance than Boomers who must deal with downsizing from comfortable white and blue collar jobs that they were trained for all their lives.So as far as I am concerned, there may be a big recession as the boomers retired (certainly, there will certainly be a death of welfare state by that time, and with it, the politics as the driving force of economy) but there will not be a great depression like or greater than that of the 1930's.
Rating:
Summary: Where's Gen X or Silent Generation???
Review: It was interesting book and having read it in 2001, I can see that many of his simple forecasts in the 90's are often on the mark. However there are many flaws that reflects his boomer navel-gazing. Why, I wonder, did Dent never chart the population surges of Silent Generation or Generation X? Moreover, where did all the immigrants disappeared to? Did they fell into the black hole after entering America? What about the inner-city blacks with unusally high crime-imprisoned rate? What about the endless resources from nanotech, biotech, and outer space? What about the cracking of welfare states now that communism is no longer a threat? I am sure that if Dent have charted all these information, the picture will look striking different.For example, many boomers prided themselves on being "largest generation". Based on simple birth rate, this is correct, but the picture is incomplete. The busters or Gen X may have smaller birth rate, but far higher immigrantion since the 60's, particulary after Vietnam War when many young people and children escaped dictatorships from Asia and Eastern Europe. Taken together, the Gen X is actually a far larger generation in simple numbers than so-called Boomers. At same time, it also have smaller capital to start business with and must struggle with crack-up of welfare state at same time. Yet, the Xers are more likely and more willing to start businesses and freelance than Boomers who must deal with downsizing from comfortable white and blue collar jobs that they were trained for all their lives. So as far as I am concerned, there may be a big recession as the boomers retired (certainly, there will certainly be a death of welfare state by that time, and with it, the politics as the driving force of economy) but there will not be a great depression like or greater than that of the 1930's.
Rating:
Summary: Exceptional book
Review: This is a very valuable book for any investor. Despite most economists' attempts to complicate matters, Dent gives the reader an invaluable insight into how profoundly simple economic prediction can be. Fundamentally, he shows how it all boils down to demographics. I'd challenge any economist to prove him wrong.
Rating:
Summary: Exceptional book
Review: This is a very valuable book for any investor. Despite most economists' attempts to complicate matters, Dent gives the reader an invaluable insight into how profoundly simple economic prediction can be. Fundamentally, he shows how it all boils down to demographics. I'd challenge any economist to prove him wrong.
Rating:
Summary: An Update
Review: Well supported by fact and Examples. Just wish I had read it years earler as I could have saved many $. I just couldn't put it down. Now I wouldn't be without it.
Rating:
Summary: A Real Eye Opener
Review: Well supported by fact and Examples. Just wish I had read it years earler as I could have saved many $. I just couldn't put it down. Now I wouldn't be without it.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but flawed...
Review: While Dent provides an interesting analysis based on the demographic forces that have driven economic growth, he misses on at least a couple of points. First, he defines the baby boom generation as having begun with Americans born between 1946 and 1964, an arbitrary choice at best. Persons born in the middle- and late-1930s and early-1940s had ostensibly the same life course and spending patterns as individuals born in the next decade or more. That is, these individuals married in their 20s, bought homes, appliances, and autos and had children in similar numbers. A person born in 1938-39 would have entered the workforce in the early 1960s and, had the person gone to college, he or she would have graduated and would have also entered the workforce in the 1960s. Where I find no fault with his argument that individuals born in the 1940s and early- to mid-1950s are baby boomers, I do contend that he extends the generation too far forward. Second, I argue that anyone who cannot remember the death of JFK, did not vote in a presidential election until after 1976, and who entered the workforce during or after the recession/depression of 1980-1982 is NOT a baby boomer by Dent's demographically-based definition. These so called "baby busters" earn significantly lower inflation-adjusted entry- and mid-level wages and salaries; they pay significantly higher payroll taxes than boomers in their career- and household-forming years; and they are subjected to a completely different occupational structure lacking in promotional opportunities and the prospects of a consistently increasing future earnings stream from employment. Furthermore, busters are marrying later and significantly more debt burdened at an earlier age than their generational predecessors, thus unable to spend at the same rate as boomers. If one were to then assume that the boomer generation "actually" began in the late-1930s and the early-1940s, then the oldest members of this cohort have already begun to, or within the next couple of years, begin to take their Social Security checks (age 62 as the vast majority do), begin IRA/401K distributions, or at least reallocate assets to reduce risk. This could account for an additional 8-10 million individuals (4 million households), of which approximately 3-4 million are direct or indirect owners of stock and bond mutual funds, whom Dent has chosen to ignore. Also, based on his analysis, Dent predicted that the Dow would peak at around 8500 in 2007! Little did he realize in 1993 with the Dow at 3300 that his forecast would be off by a mere 10 years, as the Dow closed at 8300 earlier this year (1997). According to one of his recent newsletters (October 1997), he predicts a Dow 21,500 by 2008 (when the first of his boomer cohort born in 1946 turns 62). Talk about revising a forecast! A 250% revision! What changed?! With older boomers cashing out in the next few years (2000-03) and busters lacking the incomes and job security to sustain the boomer-led consumer boom, Dent's accurately anticipated boom of the 1990s may bust much sooner than he expects.
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