Forbes: The World's Most Powerful People

http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/11/worlds-most-powerful-leadership-power-09-people_land.html

Special Report
The World's Most Powerful People
Michael Noer and Nicole Perlroth

Power has been called many things. The ultimate aphrodisiac. An absolute corrupter. A mistress. A musical instrument. But its true nature remains elusive. After all, a head of state wields a very different sort of power than a religious figure. Can one really compare the influence of a journalist with that of a terrorist? And is power unexercised power at all?

In compiling our first ranking of the World's Most Powerful People, we wrestled with these questions--and many more--before deciding to define power by four dimensions. First, do they have influence over lots of other people? Do they control relatively large financial resources compared with their peers? Are they powerful in multiple spheres? There are only 67 slots on our list--one for every 100 million people on the planet--so being powerful in just one area is not enough. Lastly, we insisted that our choices actively use their power.

1. Barack Obama
2. Hu Jintao
3. Vladimir Putin
4. Ben S. Bernanke
5. Sergey Brin and Larry Page
6. Carlos Slim Helu
7. Rupert Murdoch
8. Michael T. Duke
9. Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud
10. William Gates III
11. Pope Benedict XVI
12. Silvio Berlusconi
13. Jeffrey R. Immelt
14. Warren Buffett
15. Angela Merkel
16. Laurence D. Fink
17. Hillary Clinton
18. Lloyd C. Blankfein
19. Li Changchun
20. Michael Bloomberg
21. Timothy Geithner
22. Rex W. Tillerson
23. Li Ka-shing
24. Kim Jong Il
25. Jean-Claude Trichet
26. Masaaki Shirakawa
27. Sheikh Ahmed bin Zayed al Nahyan
28. Akio Toyoda
29. Gordon Brown
30. James S. Dimon
31. Bill Clinton
32. William H. Gross
33. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
34. Lou Jiwei
35. Yukio Hatoyama
36. Manmohan Singh
37. Osama bin Laden
38. Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani
39. Tenzin Gyatso
40. Ali Hoseini-Khamenei
41. Joaquin Guzman
42. Igor Sechin
43. Dmitry Medvedev
44. Mukesh Ambani
45. Oprah Winfrey
46. Benjamin Netanyahu
47. Dominique Strauss-Kahn
48. Zhou Xiaochuan
49. John Roberts Jr.
50. Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar
51. William Keller
52. Bernard Arnault
53. Joseph S. Blatter
54. Wadah Khanfar
55. Lakshmi Mittal
56. Nicolas Sarkozy
57. Steve Jobs
58. Fujio Mitarai
59. Ratan Tata
60. Jacques Rogge
61. Li Rongrong
62. Blairo Maggi
63. Robert B. Zoellick
64. Antonio Guterres
65. Mark John Thompson
66. Klaus Schwab
67. Hugo Chavez