Last fall, Harper’s publisher and CEO John R. MacArthur promoted Christopher Cox, then serving as deputy editor of the 165-year-old literary and political magazine, to editor-in-chief. But this past Friday, less than three months into Cox’s tenure, MacArthur abruptly changed his mind. “I can confirm that I have been terminated from Harper’s Magazine because of editorial differences with the publisher,” Cox wrote in an email to Gawker on Tuesday. “I’m not prepared to say more than that at this time.”

While the "We left our spouses for each other" New York Times "Vows" column was certainly a doozy, this new one, about the June 4th wedding of Andrea Catsimatidis and Christopher Cox, might be even worse.

Facebook: "Not a democracy," says Christopher Cox, an executive who spearheaded the site's hated redesign.

Congratulations, Facebook users! You've successfully gotten the message through to user-surly CEO Mark Zuckerberg that his redesign is made of fail. He sent product director Chris Cox to blog an apology.

Facebook almost bought Twitter for $500 million last year. The deal didn't happen — but the service found a fan in 24-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. This morning, he revealed himself as "finkd" on Twitter.

Another Facebook employee has managed to figure out how to get out from under Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's thumb — and he didn't even have to leave Facebook to do it! Christopher Cox, Facebook's director of human resources, has gotten a new job as the company's director of product. In April, told Fortune about Sandberg's entry into the company: "It was like Sheryl came and kicked everybody in the ass and said this is going to be hard. And then gave everybody a hug." Afterwards, Cox told colleagues he "felt sick after saying that," but that he had to because Sandberg had told him to. Putting an HR guy in charge of product sounds implausible, but Cox, before running HR, was an early engineer at the company and helped launch the site's crucial News Feed feature. It's not a promotion, but it must be a relief.

♦ The markets were down sharply yesterday as investors worried about the government's $700 billion bailout and lawmakers squabbled over the specifics. More will be revealed today when Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and SEC chair Christopher Cox discuss the plan in more detail in front of the Senate. [NYT, WSJ, WSJ, Marketwatch]
♦ The SEC's new short-selling rules have been generating plenty of questions and complaints the past few days. Now the SEC plans to revise a number of the rules. [Dealbook, WSJ, NYP]
♦ Nomura is close to acquiring the European operations of Lehman Brothers, a day after the Japanese bank snagged Lehman's Asian operations for $225 million. [WSJ]
♦ The Times' Sorkin: "Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.'s $700 billion proposal to bail out Wall Street is both the biggest rescue and the most amazing power grab in the history of the American economy. [NYT]

What a coincidence: Sheryl Sandberg seized responsibility for PR when she left Google to join Facebook as COO last month. Like clockwork, there's an organized publicity campaign to buff the executive's image. Take this sycophantic utterance from Christopher Cox, Sandberg's head of human resources: "It was like Sheryl came and kicked everybody in the ass and said this is going to be hard. And then gave everybody a hug." That's what Cox told Fortune, at any rate. He privately confessed to colleagues that he "felt sick after saying that." Sheryl, you should give Cox a raise: An HR chief who's so ready to fib for you is golden.