What's the more important world city? LA or Chicago?

Ok, first off I would like to clarify things by saying this is NOT a "which city do you like better" or "which skyline is better" or "which city is more urban", this is asking your opinion of which U.S. city, behind NYC obviously, is a bigger player in the scheme of world cities? I got the idea for this thread by reading another thread that had forumers arguing between which city, LA or Chicago, was more important. This is derived from the 2000 rankings of Alpha World Cities which are: London, New York, Paris, Tokyo Chicago, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan, Singapore so.. what do you think? and why?>