One Blog Closes, Another Opens

Big news, dear readers.

Today I’m bidding a bittersweet farewell to Proxyland and launching a new blog called The Big Do-Over: Fixing Financial Regulation.

Why would anyone leave Proxyland, with its lush golf courses and private runways? Well, I started this blog back in 2006 because I saw that the folks supposedly monitoring America's boardrooms and C-suites (institutional investors, regulators and the mainstream media) suffered from an acute cynicism deficiency. Since they don’t sell cynicism supplements at The Vitamin Shop, I thought I’d take my personal surplus of the stuff and dole it out here for a while. It’s turned out to be a fascinating gig, though I’m slightly disappointed that I failed to save the world.

Here in March of 2009, the Cynicism Index is moving in an inverse relationship to the Dow, our 401(k)s, and everything else that we so desperately wish would go the hell up. So there's not much point in sitting here and cracking wise about the fact that corporate governance is an oxymoron. Everyone GETS IT now, and there’s tons of good writing out there that hammers the point home, day after day.

So I'm taking the next flight out of Proxyland, though the archives will remain here for as long as Blogger.com says it’s OK.

Meanwhile, the rough beast called financial regulation, its hour come round at last, will be slouching over to The Big Do-Over. I hope you'll put on a ratty bathrobe and slouch along with us. Pretty please, with my underemployment on top? (As an enticement, I'm serving virtual donuts on the new site.)

Many of the topics I've covered here, including executive compensation and corporate governance, will pop up frequently on The Big Do-Over, since no doubt they'll be the subject of who knows how many brilliant regulatory proposals.

Here's my first post on the new blog.

Many thanks - and a zillion billion virtual stock options - to everyone who’s ever visited Proxyland!

image credit: wendyswizardofoz.com (no relation)

Tyra and Carl

OK, yeah, so I’ve been posting at footnoted but I haven’t posted here in, like, forever.

Poring over documents for no money is a glamorous gig, but it can get a bit wearing sometimes. Hey, I’ll bet even Tyra Banks, said to be the hardest-working person in show business, occasionally tires of doing what she does. I'm not entirely clear what that is. but apparently she's paid well for doing it.

So I was tempted to stop blogging about SEC filings and return to thought pieces about filing my toenails. (As Tyra once said, “I have so many goals.”) But as I sat on the runway at the Proxyland airport, clutching my brown bag lunch of broken Sun Chips and a squashed ham sandwich, ready to take off and leave this URL behind forever, something happened.

A fellow blogger named Carl Icahn emailed me. (Carl, WTF? I wrote to you back in February, man.) Carl says he has Proxyland on his RSS feed. I’m taking Carl’s message as a sign, or perhaps a kick in the pants, and resuming my posting here. I welcome any requests, suggestions or provocations.

Fake Spring Break

You know you're really slacking off when you don't even put up your "hey, I'm slacking off this week" post until the week is over and you're back.

Anyway, I am (was) slacking off this week. Not entirely, though. I did write a guest post for this blog and a column for the Hartford Business Journal. And one post for Footnoted. Oh, and I also drove on the New Jersey Turnpike. Not my idea of a vacation, but at least it didn't involve credit default swaps.

Windy City

I’m having a bit of a dust-up with the mainstream media today.

Two reasons:

(1) Rupert Murdoch is tormenting me. (More than usual, I mean.) You see, on January 30 I posted, rather randomly, about the insidious rise of the word “headwinds” as an all-purpose corporate excuse, and today The Wall Street Journal whined about the same silly thing - on the FRONT PAGE, no less, with nary a mention of Proxyland.

Next time be sweet, Rupert. A wink from you could get a girl someplace.

(2) My other complaint is that Forbes.com has made me add a new logo thing, and it’s an icky shade of blue and clashes with my color scheme.

Rampant Capitalism

So Proxyland is now hosting large flickering ads from Forbes.com, making us feel like the blog equivalent of Times Square. Why? Because we've joined the new Forbes Business and Financial Network, which goes live in January, in hopes of achieving a modest increase in fortune and fame. Here's the idea: Forbes promotes our content in various ways, and in return we let them annoy everyone with advertising and share in the revenues (if any) therefrom. We apologize if the ads bug you, and promise never again to use the word "therefrom."

Back after Christmas. Happy holidays to all!

Spotted

Business Week has found us again.

They Blog Me, They Really Blog Me

The folks at Business Week apparently dropped by not long ago. They seem to have enjoyed their visit, and the October 15 issue of the magazine used some nice adjectives to describe what goes on here at Proxyland, like "useful," "edifying" and "entertaining."

Here's the link.

No, my mother does not work there.

Guest Who

On Friday I crashed the party at Michelle Leder’s blog, Footnoted.org. Oh, all right, I didn’t really crash; Michelle invited me to post there and I said yes because I’ve always wanted to know what it would be like to have readers. But she politely suggested I keep my posts short and also I don't want to bore her fans with too much lawyer talk, so rest assured that when I really want to bore someone I'll still post here.

I can’t say yet how often I’ll be visting Proxyland this fall, since along with blogging at Footnoted I have a few other gigs. (It’s totally lame when non-musicians use that word, but why should that stop me.) So if you haven’t already done so, you might want to sign up to read Proxyland by email or RSS. That way, whenever my private jet touches down at the Proxyland airfield you’ll know it’s me and not one of the usual CEO suspects or a family member thereof.

So that’s my plan. But remember, I view blogging the way a Boston driver views a red light: sure, I could take this thing seriously, but who’s gonna make me?