Top 10 Most Paid Celebrities

Rank 1. Oprah Winfrey

Power Rank : 1

Pay : $315.0 million

Category : Personalities

Pay Rank : 1

Web Rank : 5

Press Rank : 5

TV/Radio Rank : 1

Social Rank : 11

News that this coming season of The Oprah Winfrey Show will be her last helped the self-made billionaire garner more media attention than any other member of the Celebrity 100. Her Harpo production company, which spawned the careers of Dr. Phil, Rachel Ray and Dr. Oz, will introduce interior designer Nate Berkus this fall. Months later, the list's top-earner will add the lifestyle-themed Oprah Winfrey Network in partnership with Discovery Communications to her media empire.

Rank 2. Beyonce Knowles

Power Rank : 2

Pay : $87.0 mil

Category : Musicians

Pay Rank : 11

Web Rank : 2

Press Rank : 13

TV/Radio Rank : 9

Social Rank : 15

One half of the most famous couple in hip-hop, Beyoncé continues to expand her business empire beyond music. Endorsement deals with companies ranging from Nintendo to L'Oreal and her growing House of Dereon fashion line bring in millions of dollars per year on top of the $86 million she grossed from a 93-stop world tour.

Rank 3. James Cameron

Power Rank : 3

Pay :$210.0 mil

Category : Directors,

Producers

Pay Rank : 2

Web Rank : 20

Press Rank : 9

TV/Radio Rank : 21

Social Rank : 81

As the director of the highest grossing film of all time, Cameron is definitely "king of the world." Avatar has earned $2.7 billion at the box office alone and has changed the way Hollywood makes films. In the near future almost every studio blockbuster will be released in 3-D. Cameron is already at work on Avatar 2.

Rank 4. Lady Gaga

Power Rank : 4

Pay : $62.0 million

Category : Musicians

Pay Rank : 22

Web Rank : 1

Press Rank : 4

TV/Radio Rank : 13

Social Rank : 1

A newcomer to the Celebrity 100, Lady Gaga broke down the door to fame with outlandish outfits and quirky videos, including one that featured her and Beyonce poisoning an unappreciative boyfriend. Bringing in an estimated $31 million with a 106-date tour that grossed $95 million, Lady Gaga is also a marketer's dream, teaming up with Polaroid, Virgin Mobile, Monster Cable and Viva Glam.

Rank 5. Tiger Woods

Power Rank : 5

Pay : $105.0 mil

Category : Athletes

Pay Rank : 7

Web Rank : 35

Press Rank : 6

TV/Radio Rank : 7

Social Rank : 34

Tiger Woods' fall from global sports icon to tabloid fodder was stunning. He saw Accenture, AT&T and Pepsi drop him as a pitchman, but he remains the highest-paid athlete in the world thanks to huge deals with Nike, Electronic Arts and Upper Deck. Nike built a $650 million (sales) golf business from scratch on Woods' back. His fledgling golf course design business has been hurt by the economic downturn, as all three courses he's worked on have experienced major delays.

Rank 6. Britney Spears

Power Rank : 6

Pay : $64.0 mil

Category : Musicians

Pay Rank : 20

Web Rank : 3

Press Rank : 24

TV/Radio Rank : 15

Social Rank : 2

Not long ago, most of the entertainment world had written Britney Spears off as a celebrity flameout. But over the last year Spears logged the fifth highest-grossing tour in the world, bringing in $130 million in gross box office receipts by playing 98 dates. High-profile endorsement deals with Elizabeth Arden and Candies' prove that the public expects Spears to stay in the spotlight for good.

Rank 7 : U2

Power Rank 7

Pay $130.0 mil

Category Musicians

Pay Rank 3

Web Rank 11

Press Rank 18

TV/Radio Rank 54

Social Rank 28

The world's biggest rock band, U2 launched a massive world tour in 2009 that has brought in more than $311 million in gross box office receipts. Each tour stop brings in $10 million in gross ticket sales. Add in lucrative merchandise sales, heavy radio play and a steady-selling back catalog, and you have the highest-earning band on the planet.

Rank 8 : Sandra Bullock

Power Rank 8

Pay $56.0 mil

Category Actresses

Pay Rank 25

Web Rank 17

Press Rank 21

TV/Radio Rank 6

Social Rank 62

With two hit movies (The Proposal and The Blind Side) and an Oscar win, Bullock should have been sitting on top of the world. She is financially. With $56 million she's the highest-earning actress. But a messy breakup with cheating husband Jesse James turned her into tabloid fodder. Bullock overcame adversity with news of an adoption and a public return at the MTV Movie Awards.

Rank 9 : Johnny Depp

Power Rank 9

Pay $75.0 mil

Category Actors

Pay Rank 14

Web Rank 16

Press Rank 22

TV/Radio Rank 34

Social Rank 21

Depp zooms close to the top of our list this year thanks to his work as the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's 3-D update of Alice in Wonderland. The Disney film has grossed $1 billion at the worldwide box office, making Depp the only actor to headline two $1 billion films. Depp also landed a big upfront payday for The Tourist. Costarring Angelina Jolie, the film is a rare case these days of two big stars getting big bucks.

Rank 10 : Madonna

Power Rank 10

Pay $58.0 mil

Category Musicians

Pay Rank 24

Web Rank 4

Press Rank 3

TV/Radio Rank 16

Social Rank 33

The Material Girl isn't quite ready to cede her spot in pop music's hierarchy to Lady Gaga or Britney Spears just yet. The 52-year-old singer had the fourth highest-grossing tour of 2009, bringing in $6 million a night and $138 million overall. An episode of the Fox hit sitcom Glee, which featured cast members singing several of her songs, added to her already high profile and cushioned her significant earnings from publishing royalties.

New Currency Requires To Obsecurity Of Financial Market

A paper written ahead of the recent G20 summit by Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the Chinese central bank, caused quite a stir. Zhou called for the establishment of a global reserve currency, a step which would firmly tip the balance of economic power in the direction of emerging economies like China and India, but would also bring benefits to poorer nations in the developing world.

The dollars role in international trade should be reduced by establishing a new currency to protect emerging markets from the confidence game of financial speculation, the United Nations
said.

Two very obvious changes have prompted this reaction: First, there is a growing recognition that
the course towards the current crisis was plotted when President Nixon severed the link between the dollar and gold in 1971. Second, the fact that, quite unlike any president before him, not only does Barack Obama believe in a more just and inclusive world, he also seems to recognise that creating such a world requires some levelling of the global economic playing field. The creation of a global reserve currency would be an essential first step in that process.

UN countries should agree on the creation of a global reserve bank to issue the currency and to
monitor the national exchange rates of its members, the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development said on Tuesday in a report.

China, India, Brazil and Russia this year called for a replacement to the dollar as the main reserve currency after the financial crisis sparked by the collapse of the US mortgage market led
to the worst global recession since World War II. China, the world's largest holder of dollar reserves, said a supranational currency such as IMF's special drawing rights, or SDRs, may add
stability.

There's a much better chance of achieving a stable pattern of exchange rates in a multilaterally-agreed framework for exchange-rate management, Heiner Flassbeck, co-author of the report and a UNCTAD director, said. An initiative equivalent to Bretton Woods or the European Monetary System is needed. The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement created the modern global economic system and World Bank and IMF.

While it would be desirable to strengthen SDRs, a unit of account based on a basket of currencies,
it wouldn't be enough to aid emerging markets most in need of liquidity, said Flassbeck, a former
German deputy finance minister who worked in 1997-1998 with then US Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers to contain the Asian financial crisis.

Emerging-market countries are underrepresented at the IMF, hindering the effectiveness of enhanced SDR allocation. An organization should be created to manage real exchange rates between countries measured by purchasing power and adjusted to inflation differentials and development levels, UN said. The most important lesson of the global crisis is financial markets
don't get prices right, Flassbeck said.

Australian Dollar Lower At Noon

THE dollar was lower at noon as reduced sentiment towards risk on financial markets dragged the currency lower.

At 12.00pm (AEST), the dollar was trading at $US0.7341/45, down from yesterday's close of $US0.7395/98.

Since 7.00am, the unit moved between $US0.7341 and $US0.7430.

Francisco Solar, a senior trader with online currency firm, EasyForex, said the dollar had lost some ground in the local session after failing to push above a key resistance level during yesterday's offshore trade.

The dollar had its strongest start to the local session since October 6 last year, after opening at $US0.7421/26.

"The Aussie had quite a push up in the past few days with markets expecting some sort of test towards 75 US cents, but it faltered at $US.7480,'' Mr Solar said.

"People tend to sell on the back of that, even if it was a technical trade.''

A easing in risk appetite also hampered the dollar, Mr Solar said.

At 12.00pm, the S&P/ASX200 was down 0.53 per cent, while the broader All Ordinaries was 0.52 per cent weaker.

An above-forecast result for local retail sales in March gave the dollar a lift after the release of data at 11.30am, Mr Solar said.

Australian retail trade at current prices rose 2.2 per cent in March to a seasonally adjusted rise of 0.5 per cent, theAustralian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) said.

Some investors were becoming nervous ahead of the release of the results from the US Government's stress tests of American banks, due on Friday morning (AEST), Mr Solar said.

"There is some risk tied to those stress tests, especially as they were pushed back from May 4,'' he said.

Mr Solar forecasts the dollar to trade between $US0.7315 and $US0.7415 during the rest of the Asian session.

At noon, the RBA's trade weighted index (TWI) was at 60.3, down from yesterday's close of 60.7.

Meanwhile, the Australian bond market was firmer. The yield on the Commonwealth Government March 2019 bond was 4.750 per cent, down from yesterday's close of 4.825 per cent, while the yield on the April 2012 bond was at 3.638 per cent, down from 3.703 per cent.

On the Sydney Futures Exchange, the June 10-year bond futures contract price was 95.250, up from yesterday's close of 95.185, while the June three-year bond futures contract was at 96.375, up from 96.315.

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The Trillion Dollar Deadline

How will companies pay for the mountain of dodgy debt maturing soon?

Nearly $1 trillion in risky debt comes due from 2011 to 2015, and even if the credit crunch is long past, companies will likely struggle to refinance it says CreditSights. Expect to see more battles like the current one between General Motors and its creditors.

It’s not just the size of the looming maturities that poses a problem. The central issue is that many of the buyers who helped build the mountain of debt have disappeared. The shadow banking system, the mix of hedge funds and structured investment vehicles, has collapsed, writes Chris Taggert, analyst at the credit research company. Companies with junk debt will have to fight with sturdy, investment-grade companies for survival.

Part of the blame lies with private equity firms like the Blackstone Group and Apollo Management. During their heyday, they bought companies by loading them up with debt. Those bank loans and bonds were sold to other investors, such as hedge funds and collateralized loan obligations that often borrowed to buy them. The days are gone “when one real dollar could easily buy $5 or more dollars of leveraged finance debt,” Taggert writes. Many maturities will come from these companies whose capital structures were layered with debt in 2006, during “the peak of the credit craze.”

Some $936 billion in high-yield bonds and loans will come due from 2011 to 2015. That’s 96% of all leveraged loans and 59% of the entire junk-bond index, CreditSights says.

As a result, there will likely be a rise in fights between creditors and companies similar to the current battle over General Motors debts. Debt swaps, in which companies offer to buy back debt at a steep discount, are suddenly popular with companies trying to escape bankruptcy.

Another $176 billion in credit lines also fall due between 2010 and 2015. Banks are likely to cut credit lines further as long as the economy slumps, much as Bank of America and others have for their credit card holders. Smaller lines of credit can have a ripple effect, Taggert writes: companies push to extend their debt and shorten due dates on what’s owed them. 

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Google's Top Expectations

The rotten economy may have broken Google's string of sequential sales gains, but the search giant's shares surged more than 5% in after-hours trading Thursday thanks to stronger than expected first quarter earnings and year-over-year sales gains.

Google ( GOOG - news - people ) also announced that its longtime sales chief, Omid Kordestani, will be moving to the position of senior advisor to the office of the chief executive and founder. Kordestani will be replaced by Nikesh Arora, now president of international operations, as president of global sales operations and business development.

The moves come after Tim Armstrong, Google's North America sales chief, jumped ship to take the CEO slot at struggling portal AOL in March. Since then Google has laid off 200 employees in its sales and marketing group.

Nevertheless, Google's advertising-driven results stand in stark contrast to those reported by sagging print media titles. The company's net income rose 8.4% in its first quarter to $1.42 billion, or $4.49 cents a share, from $1.31 billion, or $4.12, in the corresponding period a year earlier.

Excluding special items, Google reported earnings of $5.16 per share, beating the consensus estimate of $4.93 reported by Thomson Reuters. After subtracting traffic-acquisition costs, sales rose 10% to $4.07 billion from $3.70 billlion.

However, the results do mark the first sequential sales drop for the online powerhouse, with sales, when not adjusted for traffic-acquisition costs, down 3% from the previous quarter.

Google shares surged $19.52, or 5.02%, to $409.25 in after-hours trading.

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A Trillion Dollar - Face Off

All this talk about "stimulus packages" and "bailouts"...

A billion dollars...

A hundred billion dollars...

Eight hundred billion dollars...

One TRILLION dollars...

What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats, so I thought I'd take Google Sketchup out for a test drive and try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like.

We'll start with a $100 dollar bill. Currently the largest U.S. denomination in general circulation. Most everyone has seen them, slighty fewer have owned them. Guaranteed to make friends wherever they go.

A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2" thick and contains $10,000. Fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for week or two of shamefully decadent fun.

Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.

While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet...

And $1 BILLION dollars... now we're really getting somewhere...

Next we'll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we've been hearing so much about. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it's a million million. It's a thousand billion. It's a one followed by 12 zeros.

You ready for this?

It's pretty surprising.

Go ahead...

Notice those pallets are double stacked.
...and remember those are $100 bills.

So the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase "trillion dollars"... that's what they're talking about.

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