The World's Most Powerful People

There are 7.1 billion people on the planet. These are the 71 who matter . What do the president of the United States, the Pope and the founder of Facebook all have in common? They’re all featured on Forbes’ 2012 ranking of the World’s Most Powerful People –an annual look at the heads of state, financiers, philanthropists and entrepreneurs who truly run the world.

of life all around the globe, and measured their power along four dimensions. First, we asked whether the candidate has power over lots of people. Pope Benedict XVI, ranked #5 on our list, is the spiritual leader of more than a billion Catholics, or about 1/6th of the world’s population. Michael Duke(#17), CEO of Wal-Mart Stores, employs two million people. Next we assessed the financial resources controlled by each person. Are they relatively large compared to their peers? For heads of state we used GDP, while for CEOs, we looked at measures like their company’s assets and revenues. When candidates have a high personal net worth –like the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim Helu (#11)– we also took that into consideration. In certain instances, like Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud (#7), we considered other valuable resources at the candidate’s disposal –like 20% of the world’s known oil reserves.

To compile the list, we considered hundreds of candidates from various walks