Who really runs the world?
Experts could argue for hours over a question like that, but France's Foreign Minister, Mr Hubert Vedrine, has a ready - and quite revealing - answer.
The man who coined the term "hyperpower" to describe the post-Cold War United States considers America's pension funds more influential than its President and ranks people's passions and beliefs as key elements of global clout.
Movie makers, organised crime and computer bugs also figure in the six-part list he offered in an interview in the new edition of the French magazine La Revue Internationale et Strategique just published in Paris.
Asked "who runs the world?" Mr Vedrine spelled out his hierarchy of real global power in the following order:
"1. Nobody (or chance or chaos theory).
"2. The Americans: people saving for retirement through pension funds, company chairmen, financiers, rating agencies, journalists, movie makers, researchers, lobbies, American beliefs, the President.
"3. Five or six other political, economic and cultural powers of global influence, among them France and others, also including the emerging Europe.
"4. The leaders of all the other countries and secretaries general of international organisations.
"5. Organised crime.
"6. At the fringes: anyone who can throw grains of sand into the mechanism - peoples, passions, individuals, bugs."
Mr Vedrine said he measured power by the classic standards - "economy, currency, army, territory, population" - and by the so-called "soft-power" arising from the indirect influence that a country, a group or a trend can exercise on other countries.
"This is a realistic and factual list, without any value judgment," he concluded.