We first encountered Corporate Gadfly Evelyn Y. Davis 35 years ago at Citibank’s annual meeting. Even then she was a well-known figure. She bought shares of common stock in major companies, and she’d use her position as a shareholder to ask provocative questions at the company’s annual meeting.

Sometimes her questions would be about executive compensation, sometimes about governance issues like the elimination of staggered boards. She was quirky but she did her homework. She read the annual reports, 10-K’s and proxy statements before she opened her mouth.

In this CNBC video from last year, she praised Jamie Dimon and his ability to handle the Bear Stearns takeover, said judgment was pending on Vikram Pandit, and scolded Hank Paulson because he no longer had time for her. She also said that the managements of Fannie and Freddie should be tossed out, and that it was outrageous for those entities to make loans to people who are not creditworthy. In our experience, some CEO’s really disliked her, and they were usually the weaker sort.

This year there’s a new breed of Corporate Gadfly. The government of the United States has bought some shares in some public companies, and so some elected officials and some citizens want to play a new version the Evelyn Davis role. However, they haven’t bothered to read the annual report, the 10-K or the proxy statements. But that doesn’t stop them. The administration and Congress just make things up and no one in the media calls them on it. And that’s not the worst of it.

In the relatively decorous Golden Age of the Corporate Gadfly, an individual like Ms. Davis would cast a vote at an annual meeting, and would live with the results, win or lose. Today’s citizen-gadfly is apparently a more robust character. In the matter of AIG, for example, he wants to garrotte executives with piano wire to make his point. As a result, corporate executives will no doubt become ever more productive as they travel in pairs, disguise themselves, and prepare themselves to dial 911 on a moment’s notice. (The government won’t guarantee the anonymity of the threatened, by the way.)

With the ignorance of the inquisitors and the threats of violence against private individuals, the Golden Age of the Corporate Gadfly would appear to have ended. This all looks a bit like the French Revolution, as the government and the citizenry compete to determine which is the more vile.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 4:03 am and is filed under Democrats, EU, General, Law, MSM, Republicans, War, business, idiots!, radical chic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.