When you read or write "the powers that be," whom do you think of?

[ZombieHorde]

President Obama?

The 1%?

Alien overlords?

Seems like a simple phrase, but I don't know if everyone is using it the same way.

[NMMNG]

1. It depends on the context n/t

[canetoad]

2. I think of faceless, nameless

High ranking public servants.

[MannyGoldstein]

3. Starting from the top of the pecking order:

Bankers & super-rich
President
Congress
Lobbyists

[MrSlayer]

4. The Rothschilds and their ilk.

The small group of people that really own and run the world. Call them Illuminatti or the Bilderbergs or the World Bank or whatever. Them. They.

[Fire Walk With Me]

5. Those who, through finance and heriditary power and organizations, exert direct control over media,

currencies, trade, and other areas of life.

Murdoch, for example. And also those who are similar but whose names we do not yet know.

[Mnemosyne]

6. BFEE's bosses. n/t

[kentuck]

7. The 1%..

as opposed to the rest of us...

[Brother Buzz]

8. I always imagine it's the man behind the curtain

You know, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain".

[JDPriestly]

9. CEOs of companies, TV reporters, Hollywood and TV stars who can

get a lot of attention when they talk. Almost anyone on TV or in print who has a sizable audience. And the 1%.

[Marie Marie]

10. Koch Brothers have to be on that list.

[madinmaryland]

11. The New York Yankees?

[saras]

12. It's not the 1%. Some of them are just along for the ride.

I think of the portion of the 1% who actually make plans and decisions of consequence. In addition, there's a bunch of highly-paid middle-class intellectuals who work for them. There are a whole bunch of well-known subgroups (G20, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, all those groups the paranoids get worked up about) who work to promote global capitalism, and there's a handful of quiet people who work more informally and try to be less visible.

There seems to be debate over whether Obama is one of them, co-opted by them, valiantly fighting them, or valiantly fighting the Tea Party to get to them in the back, or some variation of the previous.

Alien overlords? One would hope not. Beastly poor taste on their part.