Angela Merkel & Hillary Clinton Head Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women

Forbes 100 Global Most Powerful Women

Forbes has released it’s annual list of the 100 World’s Most Powerful Women, based on three metrics: dollars, a traditional and social media component and spheres of influence. Forbes explains their criteria:

For money, we looked at the past year in company revenue for women in business and media, salary using the ranking on the May 2011 FORBES Celebrity 100 for lifestyle, GDP for politics and net worth from the March 2011 FORBES World’s Billionaires list for those with 10 figure bank accounts. Women from nonprofits and NGOs were rated on dollars spent fulfilling the organization’s mission statement.

The second component accounts for news hits (Factiva) and TV and radio appearances (Nexis) from the past 12 months, plus social media: Facebook fans, Twitter followers and YouTube views, all as of August 2011. Finally, we scored our candidates on their “reach” or the power bases they impact. Do they hold sway over multiple spheres of influence rather than have a single source of authority?

The top 10 women include Angela Merkel; Hillary Clinton; Dilma Rouseff; Indra Nooyi; Sheryl Sandberg; Melinda Gates; Sonia Gandhi; Michelle Obama; Christine Lagarde; and Irene Rosenfeld.

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Eye | DSK's Wife Anne Sinclair | Men, Women & Power

Michael Appleton for The New York TimesFrench intellectual Anne Sinclair

RedTracker| Today’s NYTimes profiles Anne Sinclair, wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn since 1991. New York born Sinclair is regarded as a major intellectual in France, previously hosting ‘7/7’ where as many as 12 million people listened to her interview the powerful including François Mitterrand, Mikhail Gorbachev and Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton as first lady, and stars like Yves Montand and even Madonna.

Anne Sinclair was even a model for Marianne, the symbol of freedom and republican pride in France, putting her fact on every city hall.

The granddaughter of art dealer Paul Rosenberg quit her show after 13 years to avoid a conflict of interest when her husband became finance minister in 1997. She herself became deputy director of channel TF1 and later, director general of its Internet arm. Elie Weisel describes Anne Sinclair as a cross between Pete Rose and Barbara Walters, ‘very well read, very well prepared’.

Passionate about her Jewish history, ‘she always wanted to prove that, 75 years after Léon Blum, the French were capable of electing a Jew,’ a friend told Le Monde. ‘In her eyes, that would be a formidable revenge on history.’

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Schapiro-Bair-Warren | The Tombstone Trio Arrives In Wall Street

There’s more high-level estrogen floating around this week than we can handle. Reading this week’s TIME cover story Shapiro, Bair, and Warren: Female Sheriffs of Wall Street, we also note that Washington state governor Chris Gregoire has joined the list of candidates to fill Elena Kagan’s job as Solicitor General, assuming that Kagan is confirmed.

Get me plush chair to sit down in and maybe fan myself. No, I’m not having a hot flash.

Lurking around Forbes, the WSJ, Fortune, Bloomberg, we note that the common response to ‘the boys club created this financial mess all by themselves” is that women behave by the same testosterone-infused principles when they’re running things.

Always the boys drag out Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher to make their case. On occasion Queen Elizabeth I is also dredged up as proof that women are just as power-hungry and corrupt as men.

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Putting Fiscal Responsibility in America's Doll House

RedTracker| It’s noteworthy when a Newsweek article ‘The Keys to Success for CEO Politicians’ has a photo of three women and one man — all hopeful politicians wanting to lead enormously large, messed up political institutions. Looks are deceiving, leaving one to believe that femnism is faring better than it is in America.

The comments on Raina Kelley’s Feminism, Progressive Values, and Glenn Beck article are an eyeopener in their idiocy. Comment disarray is almost as serious a problem as Washington’s fiscal budget.

Did Washington, Jefferson, Adams and crew actually carry on this way? Was America founded on yelling, screaming stupidity and we’ve just packaged the story as an American fairy tale? I always believed that rational, intelligent, unusually thoughtful people founded this country.

As America considers how to restore any semblance of fiscal vibrancy to our economic house, it’s easy enough to consider putting an accomplished CEO in charge of the country. In wondering what kind of person should lead a bipartisan Congress so frozen in ideological differences that they barely speak to each other,  I like the idea of a turnaround specialist.

Problem is, generals don’t run Washington. And a wave of populism sweeping America says ‘let the little guy’ or ‘give us the little lady’ to run America. Intellectual arrogance — or competence — is the last quality America needs in a president, or so we say.

Few pundits even raise an eyebrow to the suggestion that New York City Michael Bloomberg could spend a billion of his own dollars to run for president. Bloomberg dithered his way out of consideration two years ago and who cares that he can pay for his own campaign, to say nothing of having extensive experience in government and business. 

Perhaps the issue is no longer about the person, but the country. Beyond words, what kind of quantifiable action plan would really get America back on track? Turnaround specialists make cuts and sell off underperforming units.

Please, tea party types, don’t just say ‘cut taxes’. Show people how that would actually work.

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Michelle Obama's First Year: No Redos Required

Samantha Appleton - the White HouseMichelle Obama sat down informally with reporters to discuss her first year as America’s First Lady. Mrs. Obama didn’t know Wednesday afternoon that PETA would agree to take down their anti-fur posters with her photo front and center.

In doing so, PETA may have another objective in mind, as Michelle Obama makes it clear that she hopes to nurture a generation of healthier children.

“I want to leave something behind that says because of the time that this person spent here, this thing has changed,” she said. “I hope that will be in the area of childhood obesity.”

The First Lady made it clear that she will campaign aggressively on children’s obesity topics, even if they require her to get involved with policy issues. Mrs. Obama begins her campaign next week by addressing the nation’s mayors on children’s obesity.

In pulling their Michelle Obama foursome anti-fur campaign, PETA immediately asked for a stop to Ringling Bros. baby elephant named Barack.

My instincts say PETA might go for the brass ring with Mrs. Obama, especially on the topic of fast-food beef consumption. McDonald’s and Burger King , along with other fast food brands, are at the center of kids’ obesity.

New research demonstrates clear linkage between eating beef and losing intelligence. Between the environmental impact of lowering beef consumption and tackling kids’ obesity, Michelle Obama made well confront the fast-food industry, and with PETA’s help.

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Michelle Obama | First Lady Fashion Barbie?

Writing for the NYTimes, fashion critic Cathy Horyn fires a water pistol at First Lady Michelle Obama — I think it’s loaded with water and not a well gone dry — asking in reference to Mrs. O’s fab fashions: Is this how a modern, educated, working woman wants to be viewed in her first historic year — as a maven, an icon? Who’s Barbie now?

One first-lady fashion statement that has made waves: Sleeveless attire. (Mark Wilson, Getty Images / February 24, 2009)You say Barbie; I say modern-day Mamie, because Barbie’s no mom-in-chief. Then again, Michelle’s got more fashion zip than Mamie.

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