This, dear readers, is Naked Capitalism’s 10,000th post.
I wanted to thank our contributors over the years, particularly Ed Harrison (who was enormously helpful while I was on book leave writing ECONNED), Lambert Strether (who assists on site admin issues as well as blogging here regularly), Matt Stoller and Richard Smith, and more recently, Philip Pilkington and Michael Olenick. There are also other people who participate regularly in this site, not just by supplying posts (although most do) but also by sanity checking ideas, providing information, and listening to me vent, such as Tom Ferguson, Marshall Auerback, Doug Smith, Mark Ames, Andrew Dittmer, and Scott Frew. Some blogs/bloggers also allow us to repost their content, and they include the able group at New Economic Perspectives (including Bill Black, Michael Hudson, Randy Wray, Scott Fulwiller, Stephanie Kelton, Dan Kervick, Michael Hoexter), MacroBusiness, Steve Keen, Yanis Varoufakis, Steve Keen, George Washington, Wolf Richter, Cathy O’Neil, Ian Fraser, Moe Tkacik, Rajiv Sethi, and Lynn Parramore. We are also fortunate to have subject matter experts, such as Satyajit Das, Michael Crimmins, Rob Parenteau, Chris Cook, and Richard Alford, providing posts.
I wanted to extend some overdue thanks to Mark Thoma and Felix Salmon. In the first six months of this blog, when my daily traffic was at best 100 readers, Mark would help increase my following by linking on his blog to my posts when I’d send him something I thought might appeal to his readers. He was also very encouraging about sticking with blogging, that if I kept at it and (politely) made other bloggers aware of what I was up to, I would eventually, as he had, have more readers in an hour than he’d had in a day. Felix had me guest blog for him while he was at Portfolio, which also helped get my name out in my first year of blogging. (Separately I have to give Felix credit for taking it in good humor when another writer has a go at him, except when the subject is Ben Stein, but that departure from form is pretty understandable).
I also want to thank my loyal readers for providing an active, colorful, and informative comments section, which has become the heart of this community, as well as sending news/research sightings and Antidote candidates.
Richard Smith provided a mini-retrospective last year, and this is a key section of his post:
Consider NC’s coverage of the US financial crisis:
- March 13th 2007: An early sighting of subprime CDOs
- July 30th 2007: CDO models
- August 20th, 2007: Monolines
- August 24th, 2007: Market based funding
- August 30th 2007: Ratings agencies
- September 28th, 2007: Money Market funds
- November 10th 2007: CDOs
Now, I am not claiming that Yves spotted every single unexploded bomb in the financial system at the first attempt, nor was the exact mechanism by which they were to be detonated necessarily clearly identified. But as a rough sketch map of the trouble spots, scribbled down on the fly, a year in advance of the final convulsions of the first phase of the crisis, that’s really quite a good job. You’d be pushed to find that kind of coverage all in one place in print or on TV. If you have time, look at the sober and thoughtful comments by insiders: a really prominent feature back then, still in evidence now, quite often. Most of all, the disjunction between the grim forebodings at NC and the trad media happy talk is striking. It was all useful perspective: for instance, briefed by NC, it was pretty easy to see through Lehman’s PR, ring-led by the hapless Charlie Gasparino….
Those stories were the prototypes for any number of other debunkings post crisis. For instance:
- Change you can’t believe in was formally announced on February 9th, 2009.
- The foreclosure fraud/robosigning/MERS/LPS saga, in high gear from from mid-2010 onwards, still ongoing…
- Coverage of the 50 AG foreclosure settlement and its long calvary started on October 30th 2010, and continues…
- A quite incredible number of fights with other finbloggers and media outlets; some, very well chosen indeed, others, in my quaveringly expressed opinion, more an expression of the abundance of pugnacity that is the engine behind all this voluminous dissent.
To the list of early crisis sightings I will (immodestly) add calling the end of the credit bubble in July 2007, being an early hater of Bank of America’s investment in (and eventual purchase of) Countrywide, and doubting the viability of the Paulson SIV rescue plan from the get-go. We also for the most part steer clear of market prognostication, but repeatedly described the early 2008 oil price runup a bubble and were close to alone in saying that Treasury prices were unlikely to suffer as a result of an S&P downgrade. In addition, we have ones to thank readers for, particularly on the mortgage front, such as this 2009 discussion of securitization/chain of title issues.
Here’s a sample of particularly good NC posts from our first 9999 for your leisure reading:
August 21, 2007 On What the Fed Hath Wrought (So Far)
April 10, 2008 Ban “No One Could Have Foreseen the Crisis”
September 21, 2008 Why You Should Hate the Treasury Bailout Proposal
February 10, 2009 Geithner Plan Smackdown Wrap
December 22, 2009 “Basel III – the OK, the Unfinished and the Ugly” Richard Smith
March 10, 2010 The Empire Continues to Strike Back: Team Obama Propaganda Campaign Reaches Fever Pitch
March 25, 2010 Debunking Michael Lewis’ Subprime Short Hagiography
August 25, 2010 Earth to Bill Gross: We Chickens Know You Are the Fox Minding the Henhouse
September 29, 2010 Sorry Spectacle of Team Obama “Peace With Honor” With AIG
October 11, 2010 Bank Disinformation III: Obama Throws Weight Behind Banks, Housing “Market” Over Borrowers
November 19, 2010 Ring a Ring o’ Roses Richard Smith
April 4, 2011 What are the Preconditions for Hyperinflation? Ed Harrison
April 13, 2011 Initial Award of Frederic Mishkin Iceland Prize for Intellectual Integrity: Calomiris, Higgins, and Mason Paper on Mortgage Settlement
December 12, 2011 11 How the Federal Reserve Fights Matt Stoller
December 29, 2011 Why Ron Paul Challenges Liberals Matt Stoller
April 10, 2012 “Code is law.” Literally. Lambert Strether
May 14, 2012 Barack Obama: The Great Deceiver
June 27, 2012 Why Don’t Americans Take More Vacations? Blame It on Independence Day
Thanks again for your support of and continued interest in this site! Now I must go off and start working on the next 10,000 posts.
59 comments
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Congratulations!
Let’s all donate during the upcoming Naked Capitalism fundraising to lay the foundations for the next 10,000 posts.
NC serves as a life line for those of us who still believe in the non existent old liberalism. The first Pulitzer or a Nobel for blogging body of work will be awarded to Yves!
Wow! Congratulations. You’re really a most hardworking gang. Thanks.
Incredible. Congrats.
Congratulations!
Keep up on going! This Blog gave me lot of insight in the wonders of economy and worlds of finance! I am particularly happy with the bias.;-)
Ditto !! If I had more than two thumbs, they would all be up. Thanks for all you do, Yves.
Congratulation Yves,
As the editor of Occupy Bend, I’ve cited numerous informative items that you’ve bird-dogged over the past year since our inception. I always feel that Occupy Bend is coming closest to its native purpose when I can bring your erudition and that of the folks such as Kathy O’Neil of the Occupy Alternative Banking group to our readers.
Here’s a candidate for inclusion in your “links” section:
http://www.occupybendor.org/news.php?1300
Congratulations and thank you for shining a light into the darkness.
Yes indeed, thank you.
Well-done! Thank you, and thanks to your contributors and commenters.
Congratulations, Yves and Crew! Keep up the good fight!
Congrats Yves and team – This site is an essential part of how i stay abreast of the financial world. I hope you and the team post another 10,000 of the same quality and significance. Outstanding work and anytime the tin comes round i will add my twopenneth to keep you digging.
The readership sourced links are also very good. I find they catch a wide variety of HQ material. Must be a well read bunch.
Stay healthy and sharp.
Congratulations. I can barely imagine all the work involved.
There’s an old Latin saying:
“Verba volant, scripta manent.” or
“spoken words fly away, written words remain”.
So, with 10,000 posts, it’s a great way to commit to “paper” who said what when, did what when, over the last wretched 5 years in finance and economics …
Well done. You’ve created one of the very few places to go for engaging, informed, heterodox analysis. A beacon of a light in a very bleak landscape!
“A beacon of a light in a very bleak landscape!”
Indeed!
Many many thanks Yves for the profound education provided by your efforts on this blog. All the best!
Congratulations!
Go on with your fine work!
Congratulations!!!
Let 10,000 more posts bloom!
Congrats!
DANG!!! 10,000 posts.
congratulations on all you have accomplished, been reading since mid-2007.
Well deserved…
Congratulations. This site has become only more essential reading for me. Keep up the good work it’s a critical resource.
Congratulations and thanks. This is the first thing I read every morning.
Congrats!!! love the blog!
Congratulations. I don’t think I have previously posted here but read most days. This site makes a real contribution and it is time I made another one!
Paul
Thank you, Naked Capitalism. You people are freaking awesome.
Yves, you are awesome and addictive. Time to hit the tip jar for me.
And here’s to 10,000 more!
At 1,000 a day you can have that done in 10 days ;)
I think addictive is a good word as well. A good model for education on lots of levels. Teachers spend s much time trying to give their students incentive. They should follow NC for a while. This place is amazing.
Some say it’s a man’s world but two women guided me to an understanding of the financial system (especially real estate) and the causes of the great recession. So congratulations to Yves and fond memories of the late Tanta (Calculated Risk co-blogger). I am wiser old man for the two ladies.
Jim
Congratulations!! This is my favorite blog; the first blog that I read in the morning. Your clarity of analysis and perspective has been very impressive.
Thank you Yves and thank you to all your staff and supporters
Sincerely
The Heretic
Dear NC;
Happy Ten Thousandth!
Thanks for giving all us out here in the hinterlands hope and good sources. Keep telling Truth to Power. We’re behind you.
– Good job!
– I feel sorry for the dude who had to proof-read all 10,000 posts.
– I have 100 readers and I like it!
– Sorry FAIL! Not one mention here by all of the incredible economic/analytic talent of the one thing that has destroyed the current economic ‘state’. (Hint: it’s the same thing that enabled it in the first place.) … the automobile. The developed world and its wannabes are automobile states: the auto is the axle around which modernity revolves.
– Wanna solve the economic problems in the developed world in one post, in one SENTENCE?
Get rid of the cars, all of them at once, do it NOW and don’t look back.
– The default solution is for the force of events (breakdown in credit-political systems, fuel supply and related infrastructure) to get rid of all the cars over a period of time, this is accompanied by unimaginable suffering and death on an incomprehensible scale. Americans simply cannot get their heads around 2-5 billions dying relatively quickly, a billion and more at once … World War II was a mere 50 millions over six years.
It’s cars or us, babe.
An outstanding share! I’ve just forwarded this onto a coworker who had been doing a little homework on this. And he in fact bought me dinner due to the fact that I stumbled upon it for him… lol. So allow me to reword this…. Thanks for the meal!! But yeah, thanks for spending some time to discuss this issue here on your website.
Great mix of links also.
Thanks for an occasional touch of elegance and beauty in very unlikely subject matters and also for shaping a congenial family of readers.
NC has been my homepage for well over a year (on multiple computers) — what an education!
The range of topics and depth-of-knowledge of contributors (and commenters) has been a constant delight.
I also sincerely appreciate the INET and RealNews links and videos, and the Odiego links (when they work).
‘Thanks’ doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.
Happily awaiting the fundraiser.
NC is simply invaluable. So much has been and is great about this site, but I have to point out particularly the great deceiver post from back in May. I have not come across a more powerful indictment of our more effective of two evils, and the pathetic liberal-left that still yearns to be deceived.
Thanks for all the great work you do! I look forward to the next 10,000 posts.
Congrats to Yves and the NC family. And happy halloween!
I am grateful for NC and the important work you and your fellow bloggers do here. May some of the issues covered here receive a wider understanding among many more people and may that lead to a positive change.
All the best for you.
Congratulations and thanks.
Congratulations. One of the finest blogs on the inet.
Thank you x 10,000.
Congratulations! I love Naked Capitalism!
Congrats, to one of the most brilliant iconoclasts in the field of finance/economics.
Thank you to you and your team,especially Lambert.
“Abundance of pugnacity”.That,and dogged perserverence are the levers that move the world.
Nothing of importance was achieved by a reasonable (wo)man.
And thank you commenters.A few days ago a discussion near moved me to tears with it’s knowledge,experience,wit reasonableness and humour.There’s not much of that about out there.
Thank you all.
Congrats! This website is a daily visit for me, and I consider your daily links to be among the best on the intertoobz.
Gosh, I remember post 7,721 like it was yesterday…
Congratulations! But we need to see more political posts here. We need all you white Anglos to get off of your butts and start working for the Romney campaign right away. To ensure our victory, I urge you to immediately carry out these 4 actions:
1. Register all your dead relatives to vote. Don’t forget to register your dead and living pets, because they can vote too.
2. If you are a “job creator”, make sure you register all your illegal immigrant employees to vote AND you better tell them whom to vote for or else.
3. On election day, set up a phony voting booth in your garage. Make sure you post a sign by the curb, reading “Spiks and Negroes vote here”.
4. From a payphone, call your local police and inform the officer that your colored neighbors are convicted felons who plan to vote unlawfully. Make sure you tell the officer about all your liberal neighbors as well, because they are negroes too.
Yes, we can crush the lazy 99%. Victory is ours! Victory is Romney!
Ha-Ha! Excellent post, Zero!
Congratulations Yves! NC offers a mix of posts and links that are rich, wide ranging, and important. One of the few places where what you read overrides any mental tendency to fall into an intellectual lull (ok, laziness). Elegant and vibrant
Plus, NC’s vibrant Peanut Gallery is (to say the least) unique!
Congratulations and many thanks!
Congratulations and many thanks. NC is making a difference.
Congratulations !
Thank you and the NC contributors for the great and lively work. The world would be an intellectually poorer place without you.
Greatt!!!!
Thanks for a great page.
Enrique
I’m not sure why but this site is loading extremely slow for me. Is anyone else having this problem or is it a issue on my end? I’ll check back later
on and see if the problem still exists.
Dear Yves, congratulations on your 10K NC posts. Let there be many more.
congratulations!