NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - One can hardly underestimate General Electric's power in the world.

Businesses in everything from broadcasting to insurance to light bulbs, divisions all over the world (there's a GE Kazakhstan, a GE Bulgaria), the company pulled in $131.7 billion in revenues last year, $14.1 billion of which fell to the bottom line as earnings. With a stock market capitalization of $283.6 billion, it's the second most highly valued company in the world behind Microsoft.

Justin Lahart, senior writer at CNN/Money, talks about whether GE will matter much at all over the next ten years? Play video (Real or Windows Media)

And yet, with GE reporting lower second-quarter results Friday, investors should wonder if the company which mattered so much over the past decade will matter much at all in the decade to come.

Heresy, right? The kind of stuff that can lead to a troop of Six Sigma black belts threatening to rationalize your &*#$@. But take a look at GE's big businesses, and it's hard to see what is going to propel the sort of growth it's experienced in the past.

With the airlines in tatters, GE's aircraft engine division, which gave it 10 percent of its profits last year, faces a steep challenge. NBC, the broadcasting division which threw off 9 percent of GE's profits last year, is in good shape, but as a media company it can only grow so fast -- and it is strongly tied to the economic cycle.

And then there is power systems, the source of a third of GE's income last year and the major driver of GE's profit growth over the past several years. Such growth doesn't seem in the cards anymore since once hot utilities, like Calpine and Mirant -- big customers for GE's big gas turbines -- are foundering.

"General Electric was last cycle's story," said Jeff Matthews, head of the hedge fund Ram Partners. "It was last cycle's story because of natural gas generators. Everything else didn't hurt, but their power generating business is what really blew the doors off everything."

Matthews doesn't hold any position in GE -- he doesn't think it's good to short any more (something he had done) or to own. Instead, he sees a company that grows about as quickly as gross domestic product. Boring.

It may take investors a while to figure that out, however, as the economy recovers and the next cycle gets under way.

"There will be a knee-jerk, let's-buy-GE reaction," said Matthews. "But it won't be any kind of market leader."