ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My sincere gratitude to those who helped me with this book begins with thanks to Melissa Flashman, my literary agent, who was instrumental in moving Currency Wars from concept to project to reality. Her support never wavered and that was a comfort through long months of research and writing. I owe thanks and gratitude to Adrian Zackheim at Penguin/ Portfolio for green-lighting this book and taking a chance on a first-time author. We both had the sense in 2010 that the currency wars had far to run. Unfortunately for the world economy, we were right. My editor, Courtney Young, editorial assistant Eric Meyers and the rest of the team at Penguin contributed expertly to the making of the book. Enormous thanks are owed to my copy editor, Nicholas LoVecchio, whose meticulous scrutiny added to the consistency and flow of the finished work. Thank you all for your skill and patience.

I am enormously grateful to my partners at Omnis in McLean, Virginia, for allowing me to bring Wall Street to the world of national security. Randy Tauss, Chris Ray, Joe Pesce and Charlie Duelfer are all American heroes of the quiet, unsung type. It is a privilege to work with them. Our prayers are with our late partner, Zack Warfield.

I thank my associates inside the national security community, who cannot be mentioned by name. You know who you are. America may not know your names, but she is lucky to have you in her service.

Thank you to the leaders at the Applied Physics Laboratory who allowed me to think outside the box while sitting inside the gates. Duncan Brown, Ted Smyth, Ron Luman and Peggy Harlow never rest in their threat assessments and forward-leaning thinking about how to counter those threats. They were kind to include me in their efforts.

I owe an enormous debt incurred over many years to my legal mentors Tom Puccio, Phil Harris, Mel Immergut, Mary Whalen and Ivan Schlager. Even lawyers need lawyers and they are the best.

Thank you to my economics mentors, John Makin, Greg “the Hawk” Hawkins, David Mullins, Jr., Myron Scholes and Bob Barbera. Given my heterodox theoretic approach to their field, I thank them for listening and sharing their thoughts and views.

Thanks also to my market mentors, Ted Knetzger, Bill Rainer, John Meriwether, Jim McEntee, Gordon Eberts, Chris Whalen, Peter Moran and Dave “Davos” Nolan. Davos and I shorted Fannie Mae stock at $45 per share in 2005 and lost money when it went to $65. Today it trades for 39 cents. Timing is everything.

With Washington, D.C., now the financial as well as political center of the universe, a book like this could not have been written without the support and encouragement of, and many sets of intellectual ping-pong with, those who are closest to the power. Thank you to Taylor Griffin, Rob Saliterman, Blain Rethmeier, Tony Fratto, Tim Burger, Teddy Downey, Mike Allen, Jon Ward, Juan Zarate and Eamon Javers for guiding me through the thickets of the New Rome.

When a military perspective was needed, one could do no better than turn to Brigadier General Joe Shaefer and Rear Admiral Steve Baker. Thank you both. When I met General Shaefer, he was the only active-duty general with an SEC license to trade securities options. Priceless. Thanks also to Greg Burgess of the Office of the Secretary of Defense for his vision and persistence in sponsoring the financial war game that makes up the first part of this book. I am indebted to Greg for inviting me to play and including me on the China team. Maybe we can play the game again when China has more gold.

The War Games chapters of this book would not exist without the efforts of the “Wall Street Irregulars” I recruited to join me on the global financial chessboard set up by the Pentagon. Thank you Steve Halliwell and Bill O’Donnell for your friendship, your willingness to participate and for allowing me to tell your stories. We’ll meet again at Ten Twenty Post, where the war game really began.

Thank you to Lori Ann LaRocco of CNBC, Amanda Lang of CBC and Eric King of King World News for inviting me on your air to discuss the economic analysis that makes up so much of this book. There is nothing like live TV with smart anchors to force you to hone your thinking.

Thanks to the folks who took time to read various sections of the manuscript at different stages of completion and offered a thoughtful mix of questions, critiques and encouragement. They read not as economists but as concerned citizens with mortgages, children, bills to pay and a desire to make sense of a financial world turned upside down. Their comments made this a better book. Thank you, Joan, Glen and Diane.

There is simply no way to live with your spouse and write a book without the spouse becoming a huge part of the writing. You discuss it, debate it, argue about it, live it and breathe it. Thank you, Ann, for a thousand little things and the one big thing of helping me to be a better writer. All my love.

Jon Faust of the Johns Hopkins Center for Financial Economics and Sebastian Mallaby of the Council on Foreign Relations were both generous with their time in reading the manuscript and offering expert comments. Of course, the views expressed in this book are mine and not necessarily theirs. Thank you both.

This time I really did save the best for last. Enormous thanks and highest professional respect are owed to Will Rickards, pride of the University of Colorado and Taft School, for serving as my research assistant and editorial assistant. Any clarity and coherence in this book emerged under his watchful and demanding eye. Any errors that remain are mine alone.

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