The Best Part of This Week

One of the big rewards of doing our fundraiser is getting to read the many very kind notes of appreciation that donors, along with people who want to give but are tight on funds, pen in comments or send by e-mail and post.

As Jerri-Lynn and Thomas Neuburger have stressed, everyone who writes here deeply appreciates having an audience interested enough in what they say to (usually!) read their articles carefully, think about them, and often say something back. Your feedback, from vetting information to parsing arguments to questioning phrasemaking to correcting typos, makes all of us better informed and sharper writers. It helps improve our work, and we hope it also helps you in your daily and work communications to have free-wheeling discussions with engaged and articulate readers who are also independent thinkers. The practice you get in participating in comments, or even just lurking and making a mental scorecard of which arguments are persuasive and which make leaps of logic or are just plain handwaves are skills you carry forward in your professional and personal lives.

This fundraiser is coming to a close soon 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 1800 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, particularly since a priority in 2020 has been to hit emotional buttons rather than try to make sense of things. It is a proof of your power that our traffic has grown this year despite Google’s and Facebook’s war against independent websites.

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.

Perhaps due to how high the stakes seem to be this year due to how Covid is revealing profound institutional weaknesses, to the detriment of many citizens, we have received some exceptional reader notes this year to share. From JWP, “A Letter of Appreciation During the Fundraiser”:

I wanted to take some time to express my appreciation to all of you from a perspective you may not normally hear from. I’m a college student and one of the more junior members of the commentariat and I am grateful to have found Naked Capitalism at a developmental time in my life. I started reading about 3 years ago on a referral from an economist friend after a long discussion about greed during the financial crisis. Little did I know the referral would be one of the more profound influences of my young life.

Going into school, I was excited to study Economics and find out how it related to the world around me and especially the environment. However, I soon realized what I was learning ran opposed to what nature and the economy needed, so I began to supplement my curriculum with a heavy dose of NC. From there, my mind has been opened. From reading ECONNED and subsequent posts and learning about how the economics I learn work to harm the everyday person, to beginning to comment and interact with the intelligent and informative commentariat, I have expanded my horizons of how the world functions.

I have also found NC to be a check on my ambitions in the best possible way. It is easy to get radicalized in the academic world, especially when working two jobs and seeing people scarping by on low wages, but Naked Capitalism has provided a great deal of perspective and ways to find logical fallacies and debunk theories of portrayal that lead the developing mind astray. Sometimes this is as specific as migrating to the comments section and posting something from an economics class I found to be wrong or confusing so I can hear what other commenters have to say and improve my understanding.

Oftentimes the topic on the blog are too complex to understand at first, even admittedly so. Yet, from Michael Hudson’s explanations of how debt controls the populace, to Yves’ PE and financial exposés and explanations, as well as the thoroughly enjoyed posts by Jerri-Lynn and Lambert on the environment and our increasingly wild political sphere, I find myself with a cohesive understanding of how all these fit together to form the world we live in. Whether it be the intent or not, the posts, links, and comments on the blog provide a narrative and explanation of the world equaled nowhere else.

In short, the knowledge offered by NC when taken in its entirety surpasses that which I have learned through 3 years at a school rated in the top 30 in the country, something I doubt any other blog or site on the internet could offer. *Also a testament to the rapidly deteriorating education system*

One day, after all this crap is done, I hope to attend a meet up and get to know the folks in the NC community and for now I donate when I can because such quality content must be compensated and praised even on the tight collegiate budget.

Thank you again!

And from Chris K, who took the trouble to give a generous donation and write despite suffering a major personal loss. Needless to say, we are humbled by her support during a very difficult time:

For being a mere handful of brainiacs, you put out a website that is beyond excellent. Do you guys ever sleep? I worry that you are trying to do too much and may damage your health. Please don’t work to the point of exhaustion. (I’m especially referring to you, Yves, as you are also engaged in eldercare. Even with home aides, that is considerable additional work.)

I learn so much from your website and in this era of propagandized “news” I am especially appreciative of the measured tone you use when reporting and on your insistence on civility from the commentariat….

Please know that I hold all of you in the highest regard and hope that these few words of appreciation and my check will at least minimally convey my gratitude for all the hard work you do. You are a beacon of light in an ever darkening world.

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 helping build 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 us.