This week we look at length at an outstanding new book just hitting the bookstores by good friend Paul McCulley (of Pimco fame), called Your Financial Edge . The main themes will give me an opportunity to weave in a few thoughts about some recent data, and a lengthy telephone interview with Paul, done just before writing this week's letter, will bring us up to date on his current thinking. I think readers will take away a few good ideas, so let's jump right in.

Paul McCulley is someone we should listen to. He not only runs a rather large portfolio at PIMCO, his calls on the Fed are critical. In just one day, a correct prediction by McCulley that the Fed will unexpectedly raise or lower its Fed funds rate by a quarter of a percentage point can mean a $3-5 billion jump in the value of the $670 billion worth of mutual funds and private client funds managed by PIMCO. He writes a monthly column that I consider a must read, and his writing has been a feature in Outside the Box more than that of any other analyst. He is simply one of the best financial minds in the country. When he talks, you should listen.

Your Financial Edge was co-written with Jonathon Fuerbringer, a reporter for 24 years with the New York Times , who brings a very clear, crisp, and fast-paced style to the book; but long-time fans and readers of Paul recognize the source for the driving themes of the book. The book is subtitled "How to Take the Curves in Shifting Financial Markets and Keep Your Portfolio on Track" and is a marvel in how it simplifies the problems facing investors in the coming years, giving us a framework for both understanding and dealing with them. This book should be read by both investors just starting out and seasoned pros, and both will come away with a lot of new ideas and understanding of how the market works. I really can't recommend this book highly enough, and if you read it you will see why I think it deserves at least a full letter on its own.

Be careful for what you wish, because you may get it, and sometimes as H. L. Mencken wrote, you get it good and hard. The collective brain deficit trust, otherwise known as the US Congress, wish for the Chinese to revalue their currency upwards. Today we look at why they may indeed get their wish and why it is not going to produce their desired results. We look at a possible connection between China and the recent and odd volatility in interest rates, connect the dots on inflation and the US economy. How do you explain higher interest rates on government bonds and a slowing economy, but a relentless march to Dow 14,000? It is a lot to cover, so let's jump right in.

Last year, Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R- SC) introduced a bill which would put a 27.5% tariff on Chinese imports. There was not much chance of the bill passing, and given that such a tariff was illegal under World Trade Organization rules, it was clear the Senators were pandering to their various local constituencies. Not that they are not serious about punishing China for have the audacity to sell us cheap goods, while taking our dollars and investing them into US government debt, but their bill was mostly for show.

This week we look at the US mortgage market to see what fallout there is from the subprime mortgage woes. It is both less of a problem and/or more of a problem, depending on your perspective, as I predicted it would be last year. Score one for your analyst, which said score is needed as the stock market continues to rise in spite of my concerns in the face of a slowing economy.

This will be part of a speech I give next Thursday in Edinburgh, Scotland at the Credit Development Academy. While it will print out long, there are a large number of charts and graphs, so it is not as long as it appears. We also look at the recent move by China to enter the private equity world, and show that this is just the tip of the iceberg, while pondering how to interpret the recent housing data. There should be something of interest for everyone.

This week we look at the possible latest entry into the hedge fund world, The People's Republic of China; review the cockroach principle of subprime mortgages; and investigate the possibility of whether we need more derivatives and not less than the $283 trillion or so we now have. It's a lot to cover, but it should all be interesting.

But before we get into the meat of the letter, I want to announce a brand new web site. For the last six months, we have been in the process of creating a Chinese language web site of Frontline Thoughts. I have wanted to do this for years, and we are finally ready to go public. If you would like to read this weekly letter in Chinese, you can go to www.frontlinethoughts.cn. You will be prompted to click on English or Chinese and then enter your email address. You must have cookies enabled.

We will then send you the weekly letter in Chinese, just like we do the English version. The translation in Chinese will have the English version appended to the end of the letter. Of course, it takes my translator a few days, so typically you will get it on Monday rather than Saturday morning.

"I don't know whether change will come with a bang or a whimper, whether sooner or later. But as things stand now, it is more likely than not that it will be a financial crisis rather than a policy foresight that will force change." - Paul Volker

How long can the United States continue with an ever rising trade deficit? How far can debt rise? Will it end, as Paul Volker, former Chairman of the Fed stated above, in a financial crisis? Will it end as a soft depression as Bill Bonner suggests or is it different this time as the team at GaveKal project.

Last week I said that for this week's letter we would look at the US trade deficit and China, and in particular the possible revaluation of the currency and its effect upon the trade deficit. China obliged by revaluing the yuan (Renminbi). This is both more, and less, than it seems. There is a lot to cover, so let's jump right in.

Let's first look at what China did. They allowed the yuan to rise by 2%, with a daily 0.3% trading band based on the price of the previous day. While in theory this could allow for a significant price increase over a period of several months, in practice it is unlikely to do so. Allowing the yuan to rise too rapidly would be highly destabilizing to the Chinese economy. You can take it to the bank, even an undercapitalized Chinese one, that the Chinese government will do everything in its power to maintain stability.

"It seems like kicks just keep getting harder to find,
All your kicks ain't bringing you peace of mind,
Before you find out it's too late,
You'd better get straight," - The Monkees

Substitute the word "returns" for "kicks" in the classic Monkees hit and you get an updated boomer generation anthem. (Or maybe Peter, Paul and Mary singing "Where have all the returns gone? - a long time passing.") This week we look at issues involving pension funds, muse upon the size of the financial service industry (is it a bubble?) and speculate about Chinese currency manipulations. There's a lot of interesting ground to cover.

This week we look at how politics and geopolitical events can affect our investments. We look at a decade-long forecast from one of my favorite information services: Stratfor.com. I change my view on the euro, talk about a possible Chinese recession and look at uncomfortable analogies between 1900 and today. There's a lot of ground to cover so we will jump right in.

I have had the relative value of currencies on my mind every day for the past two weeks. I have been in London, where the pound sterling is at a staggeringly high level, almost two dollars to the pound. Prices in London have always been high, even when the dollar was at its peak. Now they border on the absurd, at least to someone used to the economical confines of Texas. Admittedly I was in a high rent district (Mayfair), but a simple round-trip subway ride was $8. From my viewpoint, it seemed that the price of everything was almost double and sometimes triple what it is for me locally in Texas. There are no cheap drunks in London. Expensive drunks, maybe, but no cheap ones (and no decent steaks).

This week we continue to look at the imbalance in global trade and the US trade deficit. What are the ramifications for the dollar? I am going to weave together several different lines of thoughts from analysts all over the world and see if we can see a pattern emerge. While I give a brief synopsis of last week's letter below, for those interested you can read the full letter at http://www.2000wave.com.

As I wrote last week, the first Bretton Woods system came about when representatives of most of the world's leading nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944 to create a new international monetary system.

This week we begin what will be a series of occasional letters on China. The topic, like the country, is so vast that it cannot be adequately dealt with in one short letter. Today, we will take a long range view into the future, looking at how China will develop vis-a-vis the developed world.

There is a mountain of material on China, as I can personally attest to, having gone through hundreds of pages of reports, essays, and data in the past few weeks. Much of the writing falls into two camps, it is like they are holding the same coin but only looking at one of the two sides. The first camp sees China as an emerging empire which will eclipse Europe and the US in a few decades, offering a rival military power to balance a uni-polar world. They will stop purchasing US debt, precipitating a major decline in the US and force us into a long and permanent recession. After reading some of the extremes of this group, I feel like buying a shovel and digging a hole so we can just go ahead and bury ourselves.