Photo Illo: Ed Johnson

Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives. Is that show even on TV anymore? And if it is, are Bo and Hope still together? (Note to self: ask Mom.) Meanwhile, on to another long-running melodrama, the madcap saga we call the market. Where will the Street lead us in 2013? One thing seems certain: it’s going to be a bumpy ride. It always is. Herewith, a few predictions for the year ahead.

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, will retire and be replaced by Gary Cohn.

You heard it here first. Actually, no you didn’t.But let’s put a date on it just to show that the Up and Down the Street team has predictive powers that go beyond the norm: the firm’s annual meeting will be in May, so Mr. Blankfein will announce the succession on April 15. Any questions?

Steve Cohen, overlord of SAC Capital, will take his leave too.

He knows the Feds are coming for him. He also knows that SAC’s code of employee omertà is beginning to crumble. It won’t take too many 10-year jail sentences to make those canaries start singing. If Mathew Martoma wants to go down as a martyr, that’s his choice, but as more indictments come out of the U.S. Attorney’s office, as seems likely, you can be sure that someone is going to find a plea bargain mighty attractive. Time to claim victory and retire, Stevie. (He also hates that journalists use the name “Stevie,” another motivation to hang up his spurs. My brother Steve, on the other hand, likes the name Stevie. More from him later.)

One who will hang on: Jamie Dimon.

The naive among us thought that whole “London Whale” episode might signal the end of Mr. Dimon’s grip on JPMorgan Chase. Not a chance. He’s a charming guy, that’s for sure, but Mr. Dimon can still throw underlings overboard with the best of them. Happy retirement, Ina Drew! There was a time when he wanted to be Treasury secretary. That time has passed. He’s going to stick around JPMorgan Chase for a while. Did I mention that my 2009 book about Mr. Dimon was called Last Man Standing? And that once Lloyd retires, he will be exactly that? Just saying. (I was informed by my periodontist the other week that his favorite teacher was Ina Drew’s husband. I promised to send him a copy of the book if he took it easy on my gums. No such luck for me. And no book for him.)

Wall Street and corporate America will finally get over their pouting and get back to the business of making money.

There is perhaps nothing I am looking forward to more in 2013 than a quieting of all the whining and moaning from the some of the richest people in this country about Barack Obama’s willingness to throw them under the rhetorical bus whenever it came time to rally the faithful. (Chrystia Freeland said it best.) It’s almost as if they’d never experienced a campaign season before! What’s more, his actions belied the strongest of his words. The president backed unprecedented government bailouts, which kept both Wall Street and the economy itself in business. He also kept global bond investors calm enough about the state of corporate hegemony in the U.S. that borrowing money on a large scale has never been cheaper. And the IPO market remains open, if not necessarily robust. So what’s the problem? Nothing but the hurt feelings of a bunch of people whose self-pity is nothing short of grotesque. I mean, seriously, Leon Cooperman. WTF? I hereby predict that everyone is going to take it down a notch over the next 12 months. Obama doesn’t need to demonize them anymore, and fractional tax hikes won’t take away their hard-earned piles of money. (Bonus prediction: the term “job creators” will be retired forever. Actually, that’s not a prediction but a wish. Pretty please?)

Gun control will go nowhere in Congress, but the market will speak.

As demonstrated incontrovertibly by the batshit-crazy Wayne LaPierre, the NRA will spend 2013 using its lobbying power to keep ridiculous weapons on the streets of America. And Obama will chicken out on serious gun control. But I see some cause for optimism. Although capitalism has showed more than enough of its dirty underside in the last half-decade, the market can also be a force for good. Consider this: With the surprising news that private equity powerhouse Cerberus Capital Group intends to unload its stake in gun maker Freedom Group (a wonderfully exasperating name), there is hope that a more powerful force than the NRA—i.e., the profit motive—could turn against our out-of-control gun culture. If big money shuns big gun makers, those gun makers will find their cost of capital on the rise. Investments in future production will drop, and maybe the next generation of schoolkids will be a little safer. Sure, somebody will fund the Masters of War. But it’s still going to be more expensive for them to do business. Which is change on the margin—probably all we can ask for.

Walmart and the Justice Department will collide for real.

I don’t know about you, but I find the sestoriesabout Walmart and the bribing of Mexican officials pretty shocking. And I don’t shock easy, especially when it comes to the morality of the Beast from Bentonville. According to recent news reports, both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into whether the company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Here’s my guess: yes, they did. But I’m no lawyer. Walmart has been reassigning various lawyers internally to show that it’s taking the investigations seriously. But things won’t get really interesting until some actual charges are filed ... this year.

The value of Facebook will remain a matter of hot debate, along with the value of you and me.

Remember the Instagram scandal in December? When everyone lost their minds over the possibility that Instagram was considering using their photos as advertisements—and usage droppedby 25 percent? While I do understand the outrage from a pure privacy standpoint, I think people really do need to get a grip. Did you really think that your photos were going to be sold as ads? Sorry, Fabio. At some point, delusional technology investors are going to realize that the fact that every aspect of our lives is being collected bit by bit doesn’t necessarily mean there’s any value in your status update or the number of “likes” elicited by some picture of a baby. Because really, people, what’s a digital life worth anyway? I asked my brother, an artist who lives in rural Ontario, what price he’d place on his own. “Anyone can have everything I have ever posted or will ever post on Facebook for $5,000,” he offered. (Ping me for his contact information.) Sure, I get the whole targeted advertising thing. And yes, I get that some people actually do click on banner ads, although I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t do so by mistake. But at some point people will realize that the value of Facebook and its ilk has been one big digital hustle.

Apple will do something in 2013. And the stock market will do something else.

What? You want more specifics? Please. Despite my own recent rantings on the subject, Apple is a hothouse of creativity and market power, it has an almost unsurprising ability to surprise us. It will do it again. And the stock will rise as a result. And then it will fall for some other reason. Or something like that. Given the company’s bellwether status, that means that the stock market itself will also rise at points during the year and fall at others. I can’t offer you more details than that, because I save those for my $2,500-a-year investment newsletter, which I send out right after I finish this column. Actually, no I don’t. But if you really want a stranger’s advice, there are plenty of those newsletters eager for your business. (Ancillary prediction: investment newsletter sales will remain robust despite an utter lack of value within.)

The money will start flowing again.

There is more than a trillion dollars of cash sitting unused on the balance sheets of U.S. companies. If you don’t believe me, believe Lloyd Blankfein, who wrote about it in a November Wall Street Journal editorial. But the election is over. The time for whining has passed. Our swan dive over the fiscal cliff will have a surprisingly soft landing. Corporate paymasters are going to start spending again in 2013, if only for the simple reason that they’re bored with not doing so. Well, that and the fear that everyone else will, which is the greatest motivator of all. (Only don’t expect Mr. Blankfein to be around to help Goldman’s clients figure out how to spend their money. He’s retiring on April 15, remember?) So things are going to pick up this coming year, both for employment and the economy as a whole. Call me crazy, but I say I’m just an optimist. Happy New Year!

editorial@observer.com

Loomis and Buffett at the 'Tap Dancing to Work' party (Donald Bowers/Getty Images)

“I haven’t read it yet,” admitted Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein at Monday’s book party at The Lambs Club for Carol Loomis’s Tap Dancing to Work, a collection of Warren Buffett’s wit and wisdom as published in Fortune over the years. (Mr. Blankfein strode briskly away when the Transom asked his thoughts on the upcoming “fiscal cliff.”) “I’m looking forward to reading it,” allowed Washington Post honcho Lally Weymouth. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon left even before the toast, during which Time Inc. editor in chief John Huey lightly roasted Mr. Blankfein. “I think it’s always good to have someone around willing to write a check to save ...” Mr. Huey began.

“Never mind, I’ve already left!” Mr. Blankfein shouted from the crowd.

But Tap Dancing to Work—which will take Ms. Loomis (a Fortune writer since 1954) on a tour of The Daily Show, Charlie Rose, and Today—is sure to find an audience among those seeking the wisdom of “The Oracle of Omaha,” or an extremely WASPy Christmas present.

“I think it’s mainly for serious investors, and young people will give it to their fathers, wives will give it to their husbands, and some people will buy it for themselves,” Ms. Loomis said.

Ms. Loomis is both friend and fan. The pair’s meeting back in 1967 was auspicious. “He was an unknown,” she explained. “What I saw was that he was just about the smartest man I’d ever met—and I know a lot of smart men.” She notes in the book’s preface that she wouldn’t have found it appropriate to have written a biography of Mr. Buffett, given the pair’s long-standing relationship. (She is an investor in Berkshire Hathaway and writes the company’s letter to stockholders, while covering Mr. Buffett for Fortune.) She told the Transom that she had never invested in a way that would contradict Mr. Buffett’s teachings. “I really never have. Once I had the opportunity to learn from him, I have never not followed his advice.” The two play bridge together as well. Asked who has the upper hand, Mr. Buffett told the Transom: “We’re about the same.”

Ms. Loomis later admitted, in a brief speech to a crowd that included CNBC’s Becky Quick, The New York Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin and Reuters’s Felix Salmon, that she’d misspelled “Buffett” in print in an early article. “I thought she was so infallible, I’d spell it whatever way she wanted,” Mr. Buffett quipped.

Don't forget all the blood donors. (Mayors Office)

Mayor Bloomberg just announced that more than 10,000 people have donated more than $32 million to the Mayor's Fund for New York City to help with recovery efforts. There are some interesting, if unsurprising names on the list. Big Real Estate—the Rudins, the Speyers, Brookfield Properties, the Related Companies, Glenwood Management among them—were big backers, even as many of their buildings were buffeted by the storm.Lloyd Blankfein made the list, as an individual, as did his firm Goldman Sachs, which is may be smart given the ire directed at Mr. Blankfein for keeping the lights on at Goldman HQ while power was out everywhere else downtown.

There are plenty of other Wall Street outfits, like Barclays, Evercore Partners, Julian Robertson, Stan Druckenmiller and New York Life. Diane Von Ferstenberg, Ralph Lauren, the CFDA, Sketchers and Vogue all donated money (maybe some warm fur coats, too?) as did casino kingpin Steve Wynn, Ron Perelman, the Giants (but no Jets), News Corp., Microsoft, and more. You can see all the cash donors, as well as the companies, like Walmart, Pepsico, North Face, Hunter Boots, JetBlue, Sullivan Street Bakery and Jamba Juice.

Cash donors:

Allen & Company LLC, American Express, American Securities, ABNY Foundation, Gabrielle and Louis Bacon, Bank of America, Barclays, Lloyd C. Blankfein, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Brookfield, Capital One, Cher Charitable Foundation, H. Rodgin Cohen, CFDA/Council of Fashion Designers of America, Entergy Corp., Evercore Partners, Fiona and Stan Druckenmiller, Sima Ghadamian, Geller & Company, Glenwood Management, GLO Jr. Foundation, Goldman Sachs, Gotham Pixel Factory, Marc Haas Foundation, the Halvorson Family Fund, the Schlosstein Hartley Family Foundation, The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, Hess Corporation, Alice Hoffman and Tom Martin, ING Foundation.

J.C.C. Fund of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry of New York, Altman Kazickas Foundation, The Ralph and Ricky Lauren Family Foundation, Leon Levy Foundation, Libra Group, The Madison Square Garden Company, Marsh & McLennan, Microsoft, Jamie and David Mitchell, Mitsui, Morrison Foerster, News Corporation, New York Giants, New York Life Insurance Company, New York Road Runners, Paul Nicaj Caterers, Related Companies, Stephen Ross and the Miami Dolphins, Ronald O. Perelman.

Julian Robertson of the Robertson Foundation, Pat and John Rosenwald, Jack and Susan Rudin and the Rudin Family, Skechers, Sotheby’s, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Sherrill, Stan Shuman, Steven J. Berger, Sidney Garber Jewelers, Societe Generale, the Stiller Foundation, TD Bank Foundation, Time Warner Cable, Time Warner, Inc., Viacom, Tishman Speyer, TransCanada, Travelers Insurance, The Tribeca Film Institute, the United States Tennis Association, Vogue, Diane von Furstenberg and Diller–von Furstenberg Foundation, Stephanie and Harry Wagner and Steve Wynn.

Major water donors:

Anheuser-Busch, the Coca-Cola Company, Fairway, Gristedes, PepsiCo Foundation, and Walmart.

Other in-kind donations:

ADCO Electric, After Hours Project Inc., American Airlines, Applebees, AT&T, BJs, Bloomingdale’s (including vendors North Face Jackets, Hunter Boots, Polo Hosiery-HotSox, Sam's Fine Men's clothing, 2Xist Underware, S.Rothchild Coats, Trina Turk, G-III Andrew Marc Coats, The Levy Group Coats, Herman, Kay Coats, G-III CK Coats, Idra Alta Moda Coats and Fleurette Coats), Colgate Palmolive, Costco, CVS Drug Store, Delta, Diageo, Diapers.com, Duane Reade, Dunkin’ Doughnuts, Everything Entertainment, Frankie’s Restaurant, Fuller & Brush, Great Performances, Holland Hook Terminal,  Home Depot, Hunts Point Market, International Orthodox Christian Charities, Inc. (IOCC), Jamba Juice, JetBlue, Lend Lease, Lowe’s Companies Modell’s Sporting Goods, Navillus Inc., New York Container Company, the New York Mets, New York Public Library, New York Road Runners, OTG Management, RCano Events, Savory & Sweet Bakery, ShopRite, Sprint, Staten Island Advance, Sullivan Street Bakery, Target, Teamsters, Daniel R. Tishman, Tishman Construction, an AECOM Company, Valducci’s Pizza, Verizon, Visy Paper, Waldbaums, and Walmart.

Which is to say, a court in Ghana ruled in favor of Mr. Singer yesterday, affirming the hedge fund manager's right to seize a training ship owned by the Argentinean navy over unpaid sovereign bonds. The Elliott Management affiliate contesting the issue is believed to be asking $20 million to return the three-masted frigate.

When you say not-nice things about people, they tend to say not-nice things about you, at any rate, that's been the case for Greg Smith, noted ping pong enthusiast and author of the forthcoming memoir, Why I Left Goldman Sachs. With the book set to come out next week, some Goldman bankers chatted up the Financial Times, telling the paper that until shortly before Mr. Smith's resigned on the op-ed page of The New York Times, he'd seemed more concerned with how much money he was making, and less interested in what he later labeled Goldman's toxic culture.

In other news, 99 percent of the times Goldman bankers used the word "muppet" they were referring to last year's movie, again, according to the FT.

Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein would pay higher taxes if it meant he didn't have to read Mr. Smith's book, or you know, if it would reduce the national debt or something.

JPMorgan said third-quarter profit rose 34 percent from a year ago as revenue from mortgage-lending rose.

The firm's chief financial officer Doug Braunstein is considering a new role at the bank, according to Bloomberg. Head of regulatory affairs and former chief risk officer Barry Zubrow was said last week to be retiring at the end of the year.

Morgan Stanley and IKB are being sued for selling mortgage-backed securities that quickly soured, turnabout for IKB, which has often been on the other side of mortgage lawsuits.

Brian Moynihan is still planning on letting go 30,000 employees.

Larry Ellison may be bidding on sports and entertainment giant Anschultz Entertainment Group, according to Reuters.

Alexander Rekeda, a former trader at Mizuho Financial Group, was the rare distinction being charged over two separate derivatives deals he structured in the run-up to the financial crisis.

In an excerpt published today in Forbes, Ms. Bair looks back on the meeting and wonders whether "the mammoth assistance to those big institutions" didn't amount to "overkill":

We used up resources and political capital that could have been spent on other programs to help more Main Street Americans. And then there was the horrible reputational damage to the financial industry itself. It worked, but could it have been handled differently? That is the question that plagues me to this day.

Which is all fine and good, but what you really want to know is what the former banking regulator thought about the bankers gathered at the Treasury. Well, have no fear:

on Wells Fargo Chairman Richard Kovacevich: "[He]could be rude and abrupt, but he and his bank were very good at managing their business and executing on deals."

on Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit: "Pandit looked nervous, and no wonder. More than any other institution represented in that room, his bank was in trouble. Frankly, I doubted that he was up to the job. He had been brought in to clean up the mess at Citi. He had gotten the job with the support of Robert Rubin, the former secretary of the Treasury who now served as Citi's titular head. I thought Pandit had been a poor choice. He was a hedge fund manager by occupation and one with a mixed record at that. He had no experience as a commercial banker, yet now he was heading one of the biggest banks in the country."

on Ken Lewis: "He was viewed somewhat as a country bumpkin by the CEOs of the big New York banks, and not completely without justification."

on Jamie Dimon: "always the grownup in the room"; "a towering figure in height as well as leadership ability."

on Lloyd Blankfein: "[his] puckish charm and quick wit belied a reputation for tough, if not ruthless, business acumen."

on John Mack: "the patrician head of Morgan [Stanley]"

on John Thain: "Frankly, I was surprised that he had even been invited. He was younger and less seasoned than the rest of the group."

It was perhaps that particular flavor of confidence that spurred Mr. Evans to forgo 15 Central Park West, which Mr. Blankfein calls home, and strike out on his own in an 8,360-square foot condominium on the top floor of 995 Fifth Ave. According to The New York Post:

Evans, an Olympic gold medalist for Canada in rowing, was highly visible at charity events in April. At one he paid $22,000 for Eric Ripert to cook in his home—in the same week that Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein said that the board has a successor in mind but hasn’t told the person yet. And we’re told that the chatter in the broker industry is that Evans deliberately decided not to look at apartments at 15 Central Park West—where Blankfein lives.

Mr. Evans new abode, which features a 42-foot-long great room, a six-room bedroom suite and nine-and-a-half baths, sold for $27.5 million, which, we might add, is more than the $26 million Mr. Blankfein paid for his duplex at 15 Central Park West in 2010.

Vanity Fair

Who is Vikram Pandit?

a) New York banker                                                                          9%

b) president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology     14%

c) famous British cricketeer                                                              4%

d) celebrity chef and noted author of Delhi does Dallas           3%

e) no clue                                                                                             70%

Who is Brian Moynihan?

a) North Carolina banker                                                             7%

b) Bridget Moynahan’s alcoholic Hollywood dad                  14%

c) disgraced former mayor of Philadelphia                              3%

d) Naked Cowboy of Times Square fame                                   5%

e) got me                                                                                          71%

Who is Lloyd Blankfein?

a) New York banker                                                                      16%

b) the first Jewish mayor of Birmingham, Ala.                       4%

c) U.S. Postmaster General                                                         1%

d) America's second most popular prop comic                      3%

d) don't know                                                                                76%

*It hardly seemed fair to John Stumpf or James Gorman to include either executive in this exercise. **By informal survey, we mean made the whole thing up, primarily as an excuse to imagine for the merest moment Mr. Blankfein bringing his impish  joie de vivre to the U.S. Postal Service and honoring his father's memory by turning around the downtrodden institution.

Think of the fees! Somewhere a lawyer is drooling over the possibility that Wall Street firms that don't participate in setting Libor will start suing the firms that do. Asked about such a legal stance during Goldman Sachs' second-quarter earnings call, Chief Financial Office David Viniar demurred. The more banks enter settlements like Barclays $451 million pact with regulators, the higher the likelihood of interbank lawsuits, Bloomberg reports.

Soon to be Libor-ated? Bloomberg has the names of three traders—Michael Zrihen at Credit Agricole, Didier Sander at HSBC and Christian Bittar at Deutsche Bank—said to be under investigation for manipulating interbank lending rates.

So you'll have to share..."I have to apologize that there are so many people in the audience I don't have enough subpoenas for all of you," U.S. attorney Preet Bharara told a room full of investors yesterday at the Delivering Alpha conference. Also: “If you have open and aggressive and fair and proper and proven cases that you bring, and you show that in the kinds of cases that I’ve brought, that’s the kind of thing that over time gives people more confidence in the market.”

Rebound: How Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts attorney general who lost a 2010 Senate seat to Scott Brown, declared war on Wall Street's role in the collapse of the housing market.

Not so golden: The foreclosure rate among Americans over 50 is rising faster than in previous years, according to the AARP.

Whither Europe: Spain is paying more to borrow on 5-year bonds than it has at any point since 1996.

CFPB strikes: Capital One will pay $210 million to settle charges that call-center contractors pressured customers into buying products such as identity-theft monitoring. The settlement included a $25 million fine paid to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in what has been touted as the year-old agency's first major enforcement action.

Will travel: Lloyd Blankfein would not waive his magic wand over Dodd-Frank and make it disappear, he said at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. He also joked that he'd like to be courted for a political appointment when his career at Goldman ends. “By any president," he said. "I didn’t mean to limit it to the United States.”

Missed: Morgan Stanley reported second-quarter earnings of 16 cents per share, well short of Wall Street's expectations for 29 cents.

When asked by Bloomberg TV's Erik Schatzker on this morning's Market Makers whether or not Goldman was benefiting from the negative press JP Morgan has recently received, Cohn explained that he "watched it a little bit" and "wouldn't call it enjoyment, but I was interested." Which sounds the kind of thing someone busted watched a snuff film would say.

He continued:

"I don't think it is good for anyone to be in the public light for negative reasons. [...] Overall, the best thing for all of us is to be in an industry that is well-respected, well-regarded and well thought of. If one of us has a problem reputationally, the other may have the problem and they will end up getting similar questions and their clients will question them. The best thing for all of us is to do our job, provide to our clients what they need to be provided and stay out of the limelight."

Besides the irony inherent in Cohn explaining this on television, it's not the most savvy thing he could've come up with: The best thing of all would be for Goldman to promise to (ostensibly) work towards a greater standard of transparency for both their clients and the public at-large. Not that it's likely, and not that Cohn should be encouraged to lie, but it's the simply the press line Goldman, Dimon, and the embattled banking industry should probably be propagating right now.

Instead, well, this:

If you've got a hedge that is making enormous amounts of profit, you should go back and look at the correlation or the relationship between your hedge and the underlying event that you are trying to hedge, or you should look at the size and magnitude of that. This gets down to another one of these points that we’ve made numerous times. Size does matter in the financial industry.

Hindsight is crazy, yo.

Finally, Cohn explained that he'd be happy to pry Blankfein from his gig, but was smart enough to hedge his desire for it on the likely chance that Blankfein does indeed live to 117.

"Of course I would like to be CEO of Goldman Sachs, but I am very happy in the role and job I'm in now and I've a great job and a great opportunity in front of me. I am very happy doing what I am doing."

Hey, that makes two of you.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek