It’s that time of year again, and, in the spirit of the season, we here at StreetWise and Portfolio.com thought we’d get in on the festive gift giving. Admittedly, most of the folks in Washington or on Wall Street have already received or are preparing to accept their biggest and most-coveted gift—reelection for the former and year-end bonuses for the latter. But StreetWise knows that sometimes it’s the smaller gifts that prove most useful or valuable in the long run. So here are a few suggestions—purely in a spirit of entertainment, of course.

Hedge Funds: Now, you might think that the likes of John Paulson and the other hedge fund managers who rode out the storm don’t need anything more to make their lives complete—except maybe a bit more market volatility so they can keep raking in the profits. But we suggest they might be happy to have a cloak of invisibility, a la Harry Potter. After all, hedge fund managers are emerging from the financial regulation debate remarkably free of new encumbrances, despite an ongoing insider-trading scandal rippling its way through the industry and the historic example of Long Term Capital Management as a hedge fund that proved that hedge funds can be systemically important, lobbyists’ current assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. All it will take is one blowup for the ire now directed at the likes of Goldman Sachs to be redirected at the freewheeling hedgies—in which case, they’ll be very grateful to become invisible in the eyes of their critics. (In the meantime, an invisibility cloak may come in handy when trying to pick up some market insights…)

Goldman Sachs and Lloyd Blankfein: Speaking of Goldman Sachs, let’s take a minute to ponder just why an investment bank that did what everyone else was doing, but just did it bigger, better, and more profitably in the years leading up to the crisis, is the target of so much public opprobrium? It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it has something to do with the public appearances of CEO Lloyd Blankfein, whose matter-of-fact comments about Goldman and its business have an unfortunate tendency to sound smug and self-satisfied. The worst symptom of “foot in mouth disease” occurred just over a year ago, when Blankfein opined that bankers were doing “God’s work.” Perhaps both Goldman and Blankfein could use a muzzle; given the ongoing pain on Main Street, as underwater homeowners and unemployed workers try to survive while bankers are once again thriving, a bit of silence on the latter’s part would probably do wonders both for his public image and Goldman’s stock price.

The Securities and Exchange Commission: It has been a reasonably good year for the securities regulators, despite the suspicion that the timing of their case against Goldman Sachs had a lot to do with trying to deflect media attention from the SEC’s own internal woes. After all, not only have they won a lot of new (potential) power from Congress but they also scored an admission from Goldman Sachs officials that they could have been more on top of the issue of full disclosure to clients. So what could these regulators possibly need in the New Year? Answer: a backbone. Let’s face it, it’s going to be tough hanging on to new regulatory powers in the face of a hostile Congress, many of whose members believe Wall Street just needs to be left to get on with its business. After all, Spencer Bachus, the Republican from Texas who will be chairing the House Financial Services Committee, is on record as arguing that “Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks”; Ron Paul, for his part, argues that “I don’t think we need regulators.” In the past, the SEC has shown a willingness to cave in to political pressure; perhaps with a formidable backbone, this time around it can avoid doing so on critical issues.

Congress: As for those members of Congress, well, now that they’ve been elected or reelected, we’d like to suggest that an appropriate gift would be a graduate-level course in finance from Harvard, Wharton, or the top-ranked business school of their choice. Let’s face it, some of the questions asked by members of various Congressional panels in their interrogations of Wall Street CEOs over the last year or two have displayed an almost embarrassing ignorance of how Wall Street really works. Let’s make sure they have a better sense of what questions to ask, even if they still don’t always understand the answers they get.

Proprietary Traders: Sure, these folks no longer exist on Wall Street—their business has been banned by the new financial reforms. Really. Honestly. I wouldn’t lie to you. So what the traders-who-are-really-just-making-markets-for-their-clients require for the New Year is a convincing Potemkin Village; a facade that will be persuasive enough to prevent inquisitive regulators from peering around it to see what is really going on behind the scenes.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission: This could have been, should have been, a worthy successor to the 1930s Pecora Commission, exposing the real problems on Wall Street. Instead, it seems as if the Republican members of the panel appointed to study the 2008 near apocalypse voted against including the very phrase “Wall Street” in its final report. In that context, perhaps any last-ditch gift aimed at boosting the credibility of the FCIC will be utterly pointless. Nonetheless, while it may be too late for any gift to be effective at helping to generate a coherent report, perhaps a life preserver would be useful to ensure that all the rival perspectives at least get a full and balanced hearing when the report emerges.

The Federal Reserve: In the spirit of lost causes…the Fed’s cheap money policies in the run-up to the crisis certainly made it possible for Wall Street to run amok. If Ben Bernanke has his way, quantitative easing will help U.S. policymakers export future asset bubbles to countries like China. But just in case that doesn’t work, or policies change, we think the Fed could use both a financial bubble detector and a giant, gold-plated pin (used to puncture the former). Oh, yes, and the willpower to use both in an era when the Fed’s actions or inactions are being scrutinized by Ron Paul.

And now for some individuals in need of some Christmas cheer:

Nouriel Roubini and Simon Johnson: Both economists seem very depressed by the outlook for the economy and the inadequacy of the financial reform proposals made to date. Given that neither is likely to be any more satisfied with what comes next, we prescribe a yearlong course of Prozac. Perhaps it will keep them from plunging into a permanent depressive state.

Alan Greenspan: Like the Energizer bunny, he keeps going and going and…. Isn’t it about time the former Fed head relinquished punditry in favor of a hobby? We don’t see him getting very excited about stamps or vintage automobiles, but what about a starter kit for coin collectors?

Christopher Dodd: He is leaving Washington, opening up an exciting new world of possibilities—financially lucrative ones—ranging from consulting to lobbying. We think he’ll need a new and much larger wallet to hold all those greenbacks he’ll be raking in.

In fact, the only Wall Street figure for whom we can’t seem to come up with a single gift idea is Jamie Dimon. The JPMorgan Chase CEO has cash, credibility, confidence (lots of it), and clout. He commands respect from the hoi polloi, rather than the distaste or dislike most of his peers seem to attract. Like Goldman Sachs, his bank survived the cataclysm; unlike Goldman Sachs, its success has attracted admirers rather than critics. Since he has compared financial crises to gargantuan hurricanes, perhaps the only possible gift for the man who has everything is an unsinkable lifeboat, just in case the good ship JPMorgan Chase founders.