Remember Bowie Bonds?

I barely remembered that David Bowie was one of, if not the first, celebrity to securitize his intellectual property to raise cash, through bonds.

In Bowie’s case, he and Prudential Insurance raised funds (Wikipedia says $55 million) in 1997, giving investors interest based on revenue from his catalogue from the 1960s through 2000.

Did it work? It’s hard to say given the story seemed to fizzle out, though it’s fair to say other names have used bonds in a similar manner since then.

Bowie has always been a clever businessman.

Remember he was a folk singer, and got nowhere.

Then, he met his wife who helped rebrand him in the early 1970s during the glam rock era. Elton John, the late Marc Bolan, and Bowie set – or cashed in on – the trend.

Add that to catchy tunes and a unique voice and Bowie has sold more than 130 million albums, according to his website.

But where has he been? His last album was "Reality" in 2003 and he hasn’t been seen since that album’s troubled tour.

Tweets have shown that some people assumed he had retired, or was sick - or you could have wondered if he had been releasing songs and no one noticed. (Never! I hear Bowie fans shouting).

His website says this new song released on his birthday is a “treasure to appear as if out of nowhere.” He also makes clear this isn’t about money, but that Bowie has “something to say as opposed to something to sell.”

Let’s see how many downloads take place on iTunes and how many presales there are for the album “The Next Day” before we judge whether Bowie has made a good decision to come back after 10 years.

Some tweets have not been kind about his voice. But as one music executive told me, it was never about his vocal range -  Bowie is a multimedia artist who has been very success for a number of generations.

A new generation awaits. They may just rediscover the back catalogue of 23 studio albums without caring a bit about the bonds once tied to many of them.

Hong Kong (CNN) - My cousin Anson Chiou, who lives in Boston, has three passions: Movies, the New England Patriots and wristwatches. I saw him in the U.S. a few weeks ago for the Thanksgiving holiday and we got into a long conversation about two of those passions.

While watching Ben Affleck's new movie "Argo," he noticed something odd in a one-second scene. Ben Affleck's character, (pictured in the image above) was putting on a Rolex in his hotel room. FULL POST

London (CNN) - India's central bank says its policy focus will now be growth, after months and month of battling stubbornly high inflation.

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Shaki, Azerbaijan (CNN) – Trading is in the life blood of Azerbaijan. As the link to east and west it was a vital rest stop along the old silk route. In the northwest city, Shaki, there are reminders of the country’s rich trading history and single remaining silk factory.

Istanbul, Turkey (CNN) – Traditionally played in Turkish tea houses, Okey is a game of tiles that is widely popular throughout Turkey. Now the game is thriving online as players compete for “digital dollars.”

(CNN) – While some babies in India are snapped on smartphones the second they are born and their pictures shared on Facebook, others never get access to the internet in their lifetime.

Bangalore is known as India's Silicon Valley because the city is a hub of technology entrepreneurs and home to some of the world's top global software companies, but the paradox is that many of its residents have never surfed the Web.

India might have the world's second highest number of Facebook users, but according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), Internet penetration across the entire population is still below 10 percent.

In the UK and U.S. it is 80 percent.
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Hong Kong (CNN) – While China has become the world's second largest economy, doing business in China is now perceived to be more corrupt, according to Transparency International.

China dropped five spots to 80th place out of 176 countries surveyed in the 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index. "The world's leading economies should lead by example, making sure that their institutions are fully transparent and their leaders are held accountable. This is crucial since their institutions play a significant role in preventing corruption from flourishing globally," said Cobus de Swardt, managing director of the Berlin-based corruption watchdog.

Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden and Singapore topped the list as the cleanest countries to do business in the world, according to the survey released Wednesday. Somalia, North Korea, Afghanistan, Sudan and Myanmar ranked at the bottom.

The United States was ranked 19th in the world, below Japan and the UK and ahead of Chile and Uruguay.
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 (CNN) – The 2013 forecast for European economic growth has turned into a prediction for decay. The European Central Bank on Thursday flipped next year's gross domestic product forecast from growth of 0.3% to a fall of 0.9% next year.

Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, told CNN's Richard Quest he fears Europe's growth problem will last more than just one year.

"This is a decade of slow growth. We are halfway through it. Hopefully we are halfway through it," says Sorrell. "And there's going to be another three, four, five years of tough stuff until we get out of it around 2017, 2018."
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(CNN) – Economic sanctions have effects, says an expert at JohnsHopkinsUniversity, but not all may be intended.

"Sanctions historically are quite counterproductive in the sense that if you impose sanctions on your enemy, it tends to strengthen your enemy," Steve Hanke told CNN's John Defterios.

In Iran - where oil exports provide about 70% of government revenues according to the Congressional Research Service - ongoing sanctions that bar the export of oil are hurting its economy.

In the past year, Iranian crude sales have dropped 60% while the value of the rial has fallen to near-historic lows. Since 2010, the currency has dropped nearly 24% against the U.S. dollar. At the same time, food prices for everything from meat for kebabs to yogurt have surged.
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Hong Kong (CNN) – Forget the red-hot property market of mainland China - a new forecast says investors should be looking south.

Jakarta - Indonesia's burgeoning capital of nearly 10 million people - is predicted to be Asia's top real estate market in 2013, ahead of cities such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney in "Emerging Trends in Real Estate - Asia Pacific 2013," a real estate forecast released this week by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the Washington D.C.-based Urban Land Institute.

The recommendation to buy into Jakarta-based property may raise eyebrows, but PriceWatershouseCoopers says Indonesia's economic turnaround over the past few years has impressed international investors.

"Interest rates and inflation are under control, and while GDP is growing at around 6.5% annually, foreign direct investment is increasing at a much higher rate—39% in the first half of this year," the survey said. "Driven by increased demand from foreigners and locals alike, office rents shot up 29% year-on-year in the third quarter, according to (property services firm) DTZ."
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