finance

By Ronald Grover

Ryan Kavanaugh's emergence as a rising studio mogul was on display at the Golden Globes on Jan. 16 when Christian Bale gave a shout-out to the Hollywood financier as he accepted the supporting-actor award for his role as a drug-using former boxer in The Fighter. Backstage, the bearded actor joked that he singled out Kavanaugh, one of the film's producers, because "he said if I thanked him personally he would actually pay me for my next film."

Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- HSBC Holdings Plc and Standard Chartered Plc, the biggest foreign underwriters of yuan bonds sold in Hong Kong, say sales will double in 2011 as demand outstrips supply and the yuan appreciates.

When most people think about the American Revolution, they think about the remarkable ideals that lay behind it and that guide the country still, or they think of the war itself, with Gen. Washington's men freezing and half-starved at Valley Forge.

What doesn't come to mind very often is how the Revolution was paid for. "Wars are fought with silver bullets," according to a Chinese saying, meaning that the side with the most money usually wins. But in the case of the Revolution, Great Britain—the richest country in Europe and the possessor of the most advanced financial system—lost despite its silver bullets. And it lost to a ragtag bunch of former colonies that didn't have a regular money supply, let alone a financial system. Nor did the rebels have the capacity to manufacture arms or gunpowder in any quantity.