Captain's Blog, stardate 12/13/06

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- What a long strange trip it's been - lately! Whew! Like being shot out of a cannon... As you may know, I was made managing editor of Fortune Magazine as of 10/31/06 (that's right on Halloween!). Needless to say I'm thrilled. It's a great honor to be heading up such a fabulicious journalistic organization. A rush, in fact. So Street Life took a few weeks off, and it's back as Captain's Blog. It will likely be morphing and growing and changing along the way. As it should be!

MARKETS: What an awesome year it's been! Just ask the folks working at Goldman Sachs (Charts). Earnings soar. Comp soars. The stock soars - by 50 percent this year, which is HUGE for a company with a market cap (now) of $85 billion. This fall you had three major catalysts. 1) The end of rate hikes, (the Fed is content - you should be too.) 2) Oil prices fall and stabilize. And 3) the private equity boom makes nearly every company look like a deal stock. Sustaining will be tough, but hey, let's see if we can keep this going, people!

ROBIN HOOD SWINGIN'! So I was at the Robin Hood Heroes breakfast on Tuesday morning. They really do know how to put on a show. Some incredibly heartwarming stories of people in NYC whom they have helped. And as always a major heavyweight crowd on hand. Of course Glenn Dubin of Highbridge (head of Robin Hood these days), Dick Fuld of Lehman Bros, hedge fund honcho Richard Chilton (he's tall!), another hedgie, Art Samberg (looking not worried at all about anything going on at Pequot), NYC schools Chancellor Joel Klein, NY Giant Tiki Barber, braggin on the Jint's recent victory (got ONE), Mel Karmazin, as well as Marie-Jose and Henry Kravis, who both said they were delighted to see me - and who am I to argue with THEM! I spoke with Stan Druckenmiller for a bit and he told me about what great work Bellevue Hospital does. For instance, check out the program that Robin Hood was honoring: http://www.survivorsoftorture.org/survivors/ (For more about the foundation, see "The Legend of Robin Hood.")

NEXT ISSUE OF FORTUNE: Okay, first of all you should know that it's the special investor's issue. Second you should know that it kicks ass! I had a great time making it - well the staff, headed by Eric Gelman, really did all the work. We have an INSANELY great story about Lenny (Nails!) Dykstra - yes he's an investa. We have a really cool piece on the hottest and coldest real estate markets, which is red meat for us all, no? And a neat look into the life of Dana Telsey, the hard-charging Wall Street (former Bear) analyst who's set up her own shoppe. It's coolio: buy it, live long, and prosper!

LOOSE CHANGE: What's the best American movie so far this decade? Without a doubt, "The Departed." .....Okay, song monkeys: Where is this lyric from? "She looks like Eva Marie-Saint in 'On the Waterfront.' She reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance." A great song and album!.....Would you take Allen Iverson?