It's what you've been waiting for – my annual Christmas gift suggestions.

But first … breaking news: an exclusive on a huge environmental/financial scandal. Remember, you saw it here before you saw it on Drudge.

Hundreds of millions of naughty boys and girls will find coal in their stockings Christmas morning.

Why? Because Santa's a speculator.

In the off-season, Santa surfs the Internet and participates in day-trading on behalf of his hedge fund, Claus Holdings BVI.

How else did you think Santa finances his toy-building operation?

This year, however, an online buddy convinced Santa to corner the coal market. With China and India sucking up coal like crazy, coal was a "sure thing." Santa had good intentions – lots more toys for good girls and boys, financed by commodities trading.

Alas … Santa bought high and didn't get out before the crash. Santa's online buddy had already cornered the coal market through untraceable off-shore, tax-haven accounts. As Santa started buying, this so-called friend dumped his position, causing the market to crash on the suddenly not-so-jolly elf.

Now, Santa's stuck with mountains of coal. The EPA is investigating why the North Pole has turned black. EPA fines and remediation programs could destroy Christmas forever. Santa's got to dump the black stuff somewhere – like in hundreds of millions of stockings.

Who's getting coal? Luckily, Santa has lots of naughty choices this year:

Mortgage brokers.

• Anyone "forced" into a loan by a mortgage broker.
  
  
• Freddie and Fannie employees.
  
  
• Barney Frank.
  
  
• Rating agencies who gave Ninja (No Income No Job) mortgages AAA ratings.
  
  
• Financial instrument engineers.
  
  
• Investment bankers who sold toxic instruments worldwide.
  
  
• Investors who claim they didn't know high interest rates signal high risk.

But aren't there any good boys and girls who deserve presents? Sure:

• For Iranian and Russian oil ministers, vodka and caviar. With oil trading at roughly a third of its peak price, oil has lost more than the stock market. Buy one barrel – get two barrels free! What a great bunch of guys – giving and giving until it hurts.
  
  
• For oil company executives, all-expense-paid trips to D.C., where Congressmen who scolded them all summer will shower them with thanks for running profitable businesses – an unusual idea these days. Perhaps building cash reserves in good times isn't greedy. Maybe it's just planning for tough times. With the list of companies begging Congress for bailouts growing by the minute, do windfall profits really seem so bad?

Want suggestions for people a little more likely to be in your family/social circle?

• A librarian (cost: $30 an hour), to visit your home and destroy all books about early retirement and how any dope can make a ton of money without working. Don't forget infomercial CDs about the joys of leveraging real estate.
  
  
• Books ($15 each) about writing business plans, for almost anyone. The ideal book should include chapters that clearly explain why speculating in real estate, commodities and highly engineered financial products is not the same as building a business.
  
  
• An actuary ($1,000 an hour) who doesn't lie, for people who run government and private pension plans. Will anyone face demographic facts now rather than later? What do you think?
  
  
• New drugs ($2 billion per drug), for big pharma companies whose pipelines are running dry. Think car companies are in trouble? Wait until the pharma industry runs out of new products as old products go off patent. The whole bio/pharma industry is on the edge of a cliff. Of course, the lack of new drugs may help solve the demographic/actuarial crisis described above.
  
  
• A certificate ($1 million) that says you are a bank holding company. The certificate puts you first in line for government bailouts, and you don't need to run a bank to get one.
  
  
• For investment bankers, a collection of old prospectuses (free on Internet) to remind them that until a decade ago, IBs helped companies raise capital to build businesses before they switched to packaging engineered financial products.
  
  
• For just about everybody, a book ($15) about how to read financial statements – hint, parentheses are generally bad.

If you're flat broke and can't afford presents, remember that Winter Solstice occurs at 7:04 a.m., Dec. 21. After that, days start getting longer and brighter.

Get up, enjoy good coffee, take a run, do whatever you do. Solstice is free and different cultures (Mayans, Egyptians, Druids etc.) have been celebrating Solstice for thousands of years.

While you're watching the Solstice sun rise, ponder this: Did financial engineering kill the Mayan civilization? No, and it probably won't kill us either.

Merry Christmas!