The Best Part of This Week

When I started this site, and back then, what was called the “econoblogosphere” was more lively and diverse than it is now, one of the things I wanted to have was a high-caliber, vibrant comments section. You’ve helped us achieve that.

As Jerri-Lynn and Tom Neuburger have described, everyone who writes here, deeply appreciates knowing people are interested enough in what they say to say something back. The feedback you give, from testing information to parsing arguments to questioning phrasemaking to correcting typos, makes all of us better informed and sharper writers.

This fundraiser is coming to a close over the weekend so if you haven’t have a chance to give yet, please go to the Tip Jar, which tells you how to donate by check, credit card, or debit card. Every dollar you give now goes to fund more original reporting.

Over the past few years, and especially over this past week, you have stood up and said, again and again, that we are actually a community, a group of people who believe together in justice. Individually, you decided to put your resources on the line to make sure that we keep going, grow, and get better, that our words and ideas matter. This is essential, it’s the first step in creating a different society, where we assert our own collective dignity.

Help us reach this new goal of 1600 donors before the fundraiser ends. Click on the Tip Jar now.

Over the next year, all of us here look forward to keep puncturing the perceived monopoly of wisdom the Very Serious People have over economics and finance. It is a proof of your power that our traffic has held solid despite continuing campaigns by Google and Facebook against independent websites.

Changing the terms of debate is a collective endeavor because ideas cannot be divorced from the networks of people who carry them. It’s remarkable that we are actually a community, as well as a website, and I’ll be thinking hard about how to make sure we manifest that going forward.

We’ve gotten donations, input and encouragement from many of you, including some important academics and journalists who have told us more than once that Naked Capitalism informs their work. Professional writers also tell us regularly that they are daunted by how much high quality material we produce, week in, week out, with such a small staff.

One of the distinctive features of this year’s fundraiser is how many donations we’ve gotten from overseas. We’ve had long-standing supporters in the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, France and Singapore (don’t be offended if I missed your country!). This year, just from the volume of donations that came in during the night US time, I could tell our level of support from outside the US had grown. This is exciting because as US news has become more and more of an echo chamber, and more and more fixated on Trump, non US readers and media sources offer important perspectives on our happenings, and even more important, help us tell us about important developments overseas, and point us to solid stories and sources.

It is also exciting and humbling to read the comments on the site and in my inbox….and there are even more in the letters that come in (and many of you send lovely cards too). While it is extremely gratifying to hear how and why Naked Capitalism is important to you, I know all of the team needs to keep performing at our high level, and try to do even more both to support the community and to contend with the media’s informational hall of mirrors.

Some of the comments from this week:

From MarkT:

Greetings from New Zealand. This donation is very long overdue. Thanks to all for the many years of sane and sensible analysis which I haven’t been able to get anywhere else.

From Stan P:

Mailing a check today for $250 in support of your great work. If I had only 1 site for my news & commentary it would be NC, no doubt.

My only problem with NC is that NC keeps me occupied for too many hours a day. It’s difficult to not spend my time reading all the excellent articles, links and commentary, and spend my time working. Being in the O&G business here in Houston/Austin, I’m surrounded by right-wing clueless ideologues living in bubbles and NC offers me a respite from knuckleheads who suffer from “World’s Smartest Man” Syndrome.

Thanks again for all you and the staff do,

From Denise:

Long overdue, I am putting my $50.00 check in the mail to you tomorrow. I am a long-time lurker and very infrequent commenter at NC.

I found your site many years ago while frantically searching for a voice of reason in the wilderness during the peak of the 2007-08 GFR meltdown. I’ve stayed over the years solely because of the quality of the writing and especially the quality of the commentariat. It is a testament to you that you’ve managed to craft a site that is informative and readable for those of us without college-level education, who have not studied economics, but who know in our very bone marrow that something very awful has happened to our country. Your writings give me great hope on those (many, many) days, especially now, when I despair that no one hears people like me, the now-almost-disappeared middle class, screaming for answers.

We must keep your voice and your site alive. I am rarely able to make financial contributions to those whose work I respect deeply, but in the same way I felt compelled to donate to the Bernie Sanders campaign, I feel compelled to add my small support to you and to NC.

Rock on, dood.

And Mucho:

I just chipped in my small contribution. Reading NC not only keeps me up with the news – and gives me that satisfying feeling when the national newspapers cover some of the same subjects, 3-6 months later – but has also contributed immensely to my critical thinking skills.

Singling out two of them: looking for the actor & the (lack of) agency when parsing the news, as well as the concept of the ‘Overton Window’ are devices that have been very helpful to my thinking. What’s more: they are easily passed on. I have introduced these concepts to friends, family & colleagues who, invariably, find them useful and illuminating.

On the substantive side: your work on the financial crisis, CalPERS, the Greek crisis and in the past year, particularly the right to repair and Brexit helped me understand some of these events and trends a lot better (though I have to admit I struggle mightily on the subject of British Parliamentary customs & laws.).

So Yves, Lambert, Jerri-Lynn, guest bloggers & commentariat: keep up the good work! Your work matters: it really does.

PS I hope there can be a Dutch (or at least, a Continental European) meetup in the near future!

If you’ve already given, thanks for sending the message that this site matters, that we can create leverage in the world from our own corner. If you haven’t, there’s still time (though not that much of it), so please proceed to the Tip Jar now! I guarantee you that in a few years, you will be proud of being a part of building this community. You will have shown that there are parts of this world that believe that integrity and dignity matter.

That’s what you’ve shown me.