Thanks! Met our Third Target, on to the Fourth!

This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 559 donors have already invested in our efforts to shed light on the dark and seamy corners of finance. Join us and participate via our Tip Jar or WePay in the right column or read about why we’re doing this fundraiser and other ways to donate, such as by check, on our kickoff post or one discussing our current target.

Thanks to your generous and speedy responses, we’ve met our first three targets: upgrading site support and hosting (which should lead to faster loading times and quicker resolution of reader problems), nice ex-post facto honoraria to our loyal guest bloggers, and travel/conference expenses and coverage. And we are more than half way towards our goal of 1000 contributors for this fundraiser.

We are now on our way to meeting our next monetary target, which is selfish but also necessary: vacation and partial weekend coverage. Some of you probably remember the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments that would happen in the past when I would try taking vacations but still kept the blog going. One painful incident was summer 2011, accompanied by when I was in Maine and the Internet ranged from sucky to non-existent. That necessitated near daily 20 minute each way drives to the nearest Starbucks. Longer standing readers may recall past Internet woes when on semi holiday trips (for instance, drafting Chapter 8 of ECONNED and still blogging while on the Danube). Your magnanimous support last year allowed me to take my first real vacation since 2008, which turned out to be an austerity tour (I got to see how freakishly empty the sparking Barcelona airport was, for instance).

Now I could simply follow the suggestion of reader Earl Crockett:

I wish to propose the founding of an “Yves Smith Well Being and Restoration Fund” so you can jet off to the Caribbean Island of your choice on every Tuesday and Wednesday when nothing of substance ever happens anymore [this was during the heat of the crisis, when the cliffhangers took all weekend].

Rather than rely on the generosity of unpaid bloggers for coverage as I did in 2008 (which led to a lot of unhappy readers), your contributions last year allowed me to task holiday as well as every other weekend coverage to Lambert and Matt Stoller. Since other Serious Blogs pay guest bloggers for coverage in specified time slots (for instance, I was paid when I covered for Felix Salmon when he was at Portfolio and more recently for Glenn Greenwald), if we want to keep the caliber of the blog up to your standards when I get some badly needed downtime, it doesn’t come for free. And another benefit of having talented writers like Lambert and Matt on the NC beat is that they are backup in case of disasters (they were prepared to step in if I had lost power during Sandy, for instance).

Last year, the vacation coverage plus every other weekend coverage came in at $17,800. So our target is $18,000, and we are already over $2,000 towards that goal. Thanks SO much for your generous support!