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The man who’s revolutionizing the New York Stock Exchange is a shrewd, calculating technocrat who turned its iconic trading floor into a machine�but he’s also the affable mensch who is managing to persuade the traders to go along with their own extinction.

An equity shortage, a new M&A boom, a weak dollar, and lower interest rates point to another year of big winnings on Wall Street.

NYSE sure looked nice.

�We’re not cranks, unless letting powerful people do whatever they want, without any public review or regard to law, makes you a crank. That sounds more like a citizen to me�a New Yorker,� Goldstein says.

This year, the Dow Jones cleared the 12,000 bar for the first time, the Standard & Poor’s 500 climbed to five-year highs, and the city’s unemployment rate hit a 30-year low. That’s nothing. Wait until you see what’s going to happen next.

To figure out how much you should give, it helps to know what other people are giving. We surveyed 60 workers in New York’s service sector about what they’ve gotten in the past and what they’re expecting this month.

The real problem isn’t the global megaretailer’s rapacious image. It’s the company’s flagging business fortunes.

The computerization of the Big Board is quickly turning the trading floor into a ghost town.

SATS: 1600. Harvard graduate: age 19. Ryan Leslie: hip-hop’s unlikely new star-maker.

A choose-your-own-adventure cost-of-living calculator*