I am in London finishing my new book, The End Game, which will be out after the first of the year, as soon as Wiley can make it happen. Working with my co-author, Jonathan Tepper, we are making good progress. We intend to quit (a book like this is never finished) tomorrow afternoon.

I am going to beg off from personally writing a letter this week, but will give you something even better. Dr. Lacy Hunt offers us a few cogent thoughts on the unemployment numbers. The headline establishment survey came in much better than expected, but the household survey was much weaker. In addition, Dr. John Hussman wrote a piece last week that I thought was one of his best, on liquidity traps and quantitative easing, and that’s included here, too. We are embarking on a course through uncharted waters. No one (including the Fed) has any idea what the unintended consequences will be.

I remarked a few weeks ago that the Fed is throwing an inflation party and not sure whether anyone will come. Last night at dinner, Albert Edwards of Societe Generale noted that not only do they not know whether anyone will come, they do not know what they will do if they do come, how much they will drink, or when they will leave.

My quick takeaway is the $600 billion is not all that much, and the buying is concentrated in the middle of the curve, where it is likely to do the least in terms of lowering rates (they are already low!), so also likely to do the least damage. Mohammed El-Erian thinks that if nothing happens the Fed will be forced to continue, which is a dangerous thing. I wonder whether they might just shrug their shoulders and say, “We tried, and now it is up to the fiscal side of the equation.” We shall see. It will be important to listen to the speeches of the Fed governors to get some idea.

Before we jump in, let me give you a few thoughts I am picking up in Europe. The yield spreads on Irish and Spanish bonds are blowing out even as we speak, as well as those on the rest of the periphery. While all eyes are on the Fed, the real action may be in Europe. We will visit that thought in the near future. Now, first to Lacy.

Are we overbought and overvalued? Maybe. Is inflation coming under control? Maybe not. Did housing construction rebound last month? No. The only rebound was in the statistics. (I know readers will be shocked to learn that some statistics just may not actually be what the headline says.) We look at all this and more as we ponder a world awash in liquidity.

One of the more interesting reads I get each week is a column from Dow Jones columnist Spencer Jakab. He has a knack for finding the unusual, and this week his talent was on full display. He did a piece on Sam Zell's latest Christmas card.

I have written (somewhere) about Sam Zell, also known as The Gravedancer. He earned this name for his flair for picking up distressed properties and turning them into profitable enterprises. His flagship vehicle is Equity Office Properties Trust (EOP). There is a bidding war for EOP, with Vornado Realty (VNO) now offering $37.6 billion, which would make it the largest buyout deal ever. This is not some high tech growth stock. This is a very rich 22 times 2007 earnings for real estate.

This week we will start with a letter from a reader who asks an important question that is on your mind (not to mention mine). From there we will piece together some odd bits of data, some of which I picked up from the hedge fund conference I attended in Bermuda and see what type of forest we are wandering around in.