President Barack Obama is the most powerful person in the world, according to Forbes magazine.

Chinese President Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin, the prime minister of Russia, are No. 2 and 3, respectively.

The magazine's first-ever rankings of the "World's Most Powerful People" assessed power using four criteria: the number of people one influences; one's ability to project power beyond one's immediate sphere of influence; control of or access to significant financial resources; and how actively one wields power. There are 67 people on the list, one for every 100 million people on the planet.

Obama tops the list for a number of reasons, Forbes said. As head-of-state over the world's sole superpower, Obama presides over the largest, most dynamic and most innovative economy in the world, is commander-in-chief of the richest and deadliest military, his political party has the majority in Congress and he was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Price, "apparently for general awesomeness," Forbes said.

The top 10 are:

-- President Barack Obama, United States

-- President Hu Jintao, China

-- Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Russia

-- Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman

-- Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google founders

-- Carlos Slim Helu, Telmex chief executive

-- Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. chairman

-- Michael T. Duke, Wal-Mart chief executive

-- Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, Saudi Arabia

-- Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Other notables who made the list: Warren Buffet (No. 14), Pope Benedict XVI (No. 11), Osama bin Laden (No. 37), Oprah Winfrey (No. 45) and the Clintons -- Hillary at 17 and Bill at 31. Forbes also put Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman on the list at No. 41.