The Forbes list of the World’s Most Powerful People is an annual event allowing everyone to have a guess. After all, if the Forbes editors can do it, so can we.
They seek to quantify the unquantifiable. A list of the world’s most wealthy people is measurable and at the top is the person with the most money.
A list of the best Premier League football teams in England last season is achievable. At the top, Manchester United, in 20th position, QPR.
However, a league table of powerful people is subjective, and inevitably flawed.
Forbes has four criteria to select what they boldly, perhaps coldly, describe as the “72 people that matter from the 7.2 billion people on the planet”.
They are: How many people they have power over; The financial resources they control; If they have influence in more than one sphere; How actively they wield their power to change the world.
This writer’s guess is that Vladimir Putin is not more powerful than the man he knocked off the number one place — Barack Obama.
