See: What to do About a Falling Dollar, Rising Yuan , by Robert Lenzner of Forbes.

FORBES: Flashback 2010: China Downgraded US Debt Before S&P

Although it's directed by a proxy (Robert Lorenz was assistant director on "Million Dollar Baby, " "Mystic River" and "Space Cowboys" among others), "Trouble With the Curve" has all the hallmarks of an Eastwood movie in his folksiest mood.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Poverty lines are often calculated by a dollar-a-day measurement devised by Robert McNamara when he was president of the World Bank.

ECONOMIST: Good-bye to poverty, maybe, perhaps

Acting on a million-dollar tip from a dying man in Naples, Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden), a small-time international intriguer with a Flatbush accent, tracks down a feared global potentate, Gregory Arkadin (Orson Welles), who hires him to do a sensitive job: to investigate Arkadin himself.

NEWYORKER: Mr. Arkadin

Consider, for instance, the tension between emerging economies' demand for reserves and their fear that the main reserve currency, the dollar, may lose value a dilemma first noted in 1947 by Robert Triffin, a Belgian economist.

ECONOMIST: Is there a better way to organise the world��s currencies?

You bought it from a wire rack in the bus terminal, less than a dollar a shot, and took home Alfred Bester, Fritz Leiber, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Sheckley, and many others and then you saw things differently, in extraordinary company.

NEWYORKER: Olds Rocket 88, 1950