Steven Mnuchin had a pretty good weekend.

First the treasury secretary pick advanced a step closer toward confirmation on Friday.

Then his latest movie claimed the top spot at the box office.

Mnuchin is an executive producer on Warner Bros.’ “The Lego Batman Movie,” which pulled in an estimated $55.6 million from U.S. audiences during its opening weekend.

CNN, like Warner Bros., is owned by Time Warner.

The kid-friendly spinoff of 2014’s “The Lego Movie” handily beat its raunchy competitor, Universal’s “Fifty Shades Darker.”

The sequel to 2015’s “Fifty Shades of Grey,” based on a best-selling series of romance novels, debuted at $46.8 million in the United States.

Related: Possible pick for Treasury secretary makes his film debut

Mnuchin is listed as a producer or executive producer on 34 films in recent years, including last summer’s “Suicide Squad,” which brought in $786 million worldwide.

He also produced “The Lego Ninjago Movie,” another Lego franchise spinoff that will hit screens this fall.

Mnuchin is widely expected to be serving as Treasury secretary by then.

Following a 53-46 vote last Friday to break a Democratic filibuster, Mnuchin is scheduled for a final vote before the full Senate at 7 p.m. Monday.

–CNNMoney’s Frank Pallotta and CNN’s Ashley Killough contributed to this story.

CNNMoney (New York) First published February 12, 2017: 5:39 PM ET

The trade war between China and the United States is intensifying, but Beijing has just taken one potential weapon off the table.

Premier Li Keqiang told an audience of global executives and policymakers that China would not weaken the yuan to boost trade with the rest of the world.

“China will never go down the path of stimulating exports by devaluing its currency,” Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said Wednesday.

His comments came a day after the United States and China announced that they would impose their biggest rounds of tariffs yet on each other’s exports, starting next week.

That brings the value of goods hit by tariffs in the escalating conflict to more than $360 billion. President Donald Trump has threatened to hit another $267 billion of Chinese goods with tariffs.

China, which buys far less from the United States than the other way round, is starting to run low on American products to target, raising speculation about what other measures it could take to hit back.

Driving down the currency, which is also known as the renminbi, isn’t one of them, according to Li.

“Persistent depreciation of the renminbi will only do more harm than good to our country,” he said during a speech at a World Economic Forum event in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin.

The yuan has dropped sharply against the dollar as the trade fight has ramped up, losing about 9% of its value since April.

The decline has drawn the attention of President Trump, who has often accused China of devaluing the yuan to boost its huge export industry. Trump claimed in July that China was “manipulating” its currency lower.

Li dismissed that idea on Wednesday.

“The recent fluctuations in the renminbi exchange rate have been seen by some as an intentional measure on the part of China,” he said. “This is simply not true.”

The Chinese government plays a significant role in setting the value of the yuan and how it trades. Economists generally agree Beijing kept the currency artificially low in the past, but they are skeptical that government intervention has driven it down against the dollar and other major currencies this year.

They say the escalating trade war with the United States and concerns over a slowdown in the Chinese economy have helped push the yuan lower at a time when the US Federal Reserve is steadily raising interest rates. That policy makes it more attractive for investors to hold assets in US dollars, prompting them to sell other currencies.

Sudden drops in the yuan in 2015 and early 2016 set off turmoil in global markets as money poured out of China’s economy. Beijing spent hundreds of billions of dollars propping it up.

China will “work to create conditions for keeping the value of the yuan stable,” Li said Wednesday.

His words weren’t enough to convince everyone, though.

“Manipulation has occurred and is occurring, and I hope that action is taken,” Todd Rokita, a Trump-supporting congressman from Indiana, told CNN at the Tianjin conference just minutes after Li’s speech.

CNNMoney (Tianjin, China) First published September 19, 2018: 3:26 AM ET

Beth Ford’s first job paid $2 an hour. Early in the morning, she climbed on the school bus to go detassel corn, joining other kids in Sioux City, Iowa, who did it as a summer job.

“Back then, two dollars an hour, that was real money,” Ford tells CNN’s Poppy Harlow in the latest episode of Boss Files.

Now, as the first female CEO of Land O’Lakes — and the first openly gay female CEO in the Fortune 500 list of largest US companies — Ford remembers a conversation with her mother years ago that taught her that “while we may not have everything, we have enough, and given what we have, much was expected of us.”

“She said, ‘Do you understand what is expected of you? Do you understand how much you have? Don’t disappoint,’ and I was like, ‘I’ve gotta work hard to not disappoint,’” Ford says.

Ford has a vision for Land O’Lakes. She wants to transform people’s perceptions of the butter and cream company and refocus attention on the efforts it’s making in the ag-tech space.

“My vision is to continue to invest in technology,” she says. “You have to have agility. E-commerce and e-business and technology is disrupting all industries, including agriculture, and there’s an opportunity when you have an insight-driven, technology-focused company, as I believe Land O’ Lakes is.”

The future of Land O’Lakes

In July, the United States slapped tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese imports, a move China called the beginning of “the biggest trade war in economic history.” In response, China imposed tariffs on billions of dollars worth of US exports, including cotton, dairy and soybeans.

“Grain farmers, growers, and producers across the US are all affected by the uncertainty churning around trade negotiations and retaliatory tariffs,” Ford says. “Export market access is critical to these farmers and the agriculture industry and we’re seeing a slowdown due to uncertainty in the trade environment.”

Ford says she’s spoken with soybean farmers and others concerned with the tariff politics.

“What I would tell you is that our farmer members are supportive in understanding that the administration is trying to do something on intellectual property theft,” she says. “They want to make sure that they have appropriate trade agreements, and I think that they’re supportive.”

More than anything else, she says, these farmers need resolution and clarity — quickly.

“Time is critical,” she says. “So then what’s the most important thing the administration can do? They can move with speed and resolve these trade issues and resolve those tariff issues.”

When the announcement about Ford’s promotion to CEO went out, the press release celebrated her achievements, but it made no special mention of an important “first” in Fortune 500 history.

With Ford’s promotion, she became the first openly gay female CEO to lead a Fortune 500 company.

In the months since, she’s heard from people about how much that “first” has meant to them.

“People have come up to me and said, ‘Thank you,’” she says. “And it’s not just the LGBTQ community, it is just people in their normal life saying, ‘Thank you for being your authentic self and encouraging others to do that.’”

Ford says she’s never faced discrimination in her career, but she’s definitely considered its potential impact on herself and her family.

“I had made deliberate decisions for some places where I felt as though it may not be as friendly,” she says. “I said, ‘The job looks great. You’re a wonderful leader. I can’t be here because I don’t think this will be great. My spouse is a woman, and I have a daughter.”

Thinking about the dwindling percentage of female CEOs in the Fortune 500, she says progress can’t be truly made until the overall number of women leaders increases — something that she sees as “a shared responsibility” for management teams and their talent development programs.

On that path to the C-suite, she calls back to an important lesson, yet again from her mother: “Beth, if you want something, ask for it.”

“You expect you’re going to be recognized because you’ve done the hard work, and that isn’t actually how it always happens,” Ford says.

General Electric, once America’s most valuable company, is now in sharp decline.

In a year full of dubious landmarks, GE has encountered another: The storied conglomerate is now worth less than $100 billion. That hasn’t happened since March 2009 — during the Great Recession.

GE’s (GE) stock crash — down by nearly two-thirds since the end of 2016 — has knocked the company down to the 59th most valuable in the S&P 500.

It’s a stunning reversal. GE was No. 1 in the S&P 500 as recently as 2004, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. At the time, it was worth nearly $400 billion. Now GE is worth just a tenth of Apple (AAPL), the $1 trillion top dog of the market, and it’s fallen behind Salesforce (CRM), PayPal (PYPL) and Nvidia (NVDA).

GE’s struggles got it kicked out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average this summer. GE was an original member of the exclusive index in 1896 and had been in it continuously for 110 years.

Plunging profits and mounting debt have driven GE’s shares down by 35% this year. Only four S&P 500 companies have had a worse 2018.

The most remarkable part about GE’s decline is it comes at a time when the American economy and stock market are soaring. Rival industrial companies including Honeywell (HON) and United Technologies (UTX) are booming.

But GE has been hobbled by years of poorly timed deals and needless complexity that have finally come home to roost. To pay off debt and jump-start the stock, GE is selling off countless businesses, including its century-old railroad division, Thomas Edison’s light-bulb unit, Baker Hughes and the health-care unit that makes MRI machines.

Selling in GE’s stock has accelerated in recent days because of worries about GE Power, the most troubled part of the slumping conglomerate. GE confirmed last week that two of its gas turbines failed, forcing the closure of power plants.

The turbine trouble could hurt the company’s reputation and sales at a time when it’s already strapped for cash.

In a statement, GE said that it has “identified a fix” and has been working with customers to “quickly return units to service.”

JPMorgan Chase analyst C. Stephen Tusa, Jr, Wall Street’s biggest GE bear, told clients the turbine failure “raises red flags” about GE Power.

Others think that shareholders are overreacting. Most likely, GE’s “fundamental technology is sound” and repair costs will be “manageable,” Bank of America analyst Andrew Obin wrote to clients.

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 26, 2018: 10:32 AM ET

How’s this for déjà vu? Another debt crisis is brewing in Europe.

Greece needs European creditors to release cash from a bailout agreed in 2015 so it can make debt repayments, but officials are at loggerheads. Investors are starting to worry, demanding higher returns on Greek debt.

Adding to the confusion is a warning from the International Monetary Fund that Greece’s debt is unsustainable and on an “explosive” path, an assessment that prevents the fund from participating in a rescue.

The timing could hardly be worse. European leaders have a lot on their plate. Elections are looming in the Netherlands, France and Germany. Brexit negotiations will begin within weeks.

Yet the threat of Greece tumbling out of the euro demands attention. Here’s why the next few weeks will be key:

Greece is running out of cash, but it needs to make repayments to creditors including the European Central Bank. Major bills are coming due in July.

If Greece cannot make the payments, it will default on its debt and spiral out of the eurozone.

Meanwhile, its latest bailout — the third since 2010 — is effectively frozen. The negotiating positions of major players are further apart than at any point since the bailout was agreed in June, 2015.

There is even disagreement over the size of the problem facing Greece.

“The IMF’s latest review of Greece’s debt position was surprisingly pessimistic,” said Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister who chairs meetings of top eurozone finance officials. “It’s surprising because Greece is already doing better than that report describes.”

The IMF, Greece and creditors led by Germany all have very different priorities. Here’s what each wants:

The IMF has called on Greece to make more ambitious changes to its economy, including labor market reforms. The IMF didn’t join the third bailout when first agreed in 2015 because it did not view Greece’s debt as being sustainable. It still maintains that Greece cannot be self sustaining without major debt relief.

Greece’s main creditors agree that Athens should implement the reforms proposed by the IMF. However, they have categorically ruled out any debt relief, a position reiterated by eurozone finance officials on Tuesday.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, meanwhile, shows no sign of yielding to demands for additional reforms. He insists that debt relief is needed before any new concessions are made.

It’s a classic standoff and investors are watching to see which party blinks first.

The next major milestone is a meeting of eurozone finance ministers on Feb. 20 — the last before elections start muddying Europe’s political waters. Agreeing yet more financial aid for Greece will become even harder once voters start casting their ballots.

After that, bills will start coming due. Greece faces a payment to the ECB of roughly €1.4 billion in late April and another €4.1 billion in July.

The stake are high.

The unemployment rate in Greece is expected to run above 21% in 2017. Investment is down by more than 60% and output has contracted by more than 25% since the financial crisis. The country’s social fabric is fraying.

If European creditors refuse further help, Greece’s debt will spiral out of control no matter how quickly its economy grows, according to the IMF.

That will leave only one option — abandoning the euro.

Ted Malloch, President Trump’s expected choice for U.S. ambassador to the EU, told Greek television on Tuesday that the eurozone’s future would be decided in the next 18 months.

“Certainly there will be a Europe, whether the eurozone survives, I think it’s very much a question that is on the agenda,” he said. “I think this time I would have to say that the odds are higher that Greece itself will break out of the euro.”

CNNMoney (London) First published February 8, 2017: 12:27 PM ET