As we describe in our fundraiser kickoff post, 2024 has been a wild ride. We’ve risen to its demands through in-depth, ahead-of-the-curve analysis on wide-ranging topics from the US economic war with China, de-industrialization in the US and Europe, the Ukraine conflict and its widening geopolitical implications, private equity’s continued looting, the rise of much-demonized populism and press censorship to try to combat it, and first-class Covid and now syndemic coverage. We’ve also opened major new beats, such as war in Gaza, coverage of politics and economics in Germany, Turkiye and Argentina, plus AI boosterism and questionable implementations. If you are proud of us too, please go immediately to the Tip Jar to give by check, debit or credit card. Support world-ranging information curating, incisive commentary, mordant wit, and endearing animal photos.
Commentors have given us even more accolades in comments than in years past. Some examples:
From XXYY:
Yves, thank you so much for the good, detailed coverage of Gaza that NC is putting out. I know very well how much work this kind of thing is and I think we all appreciate the effort and growing expertise that your organization is displaying.
NC continues to be a fabulous and valuable resource to its readership.
And Lurker Walleye:
Yes, many thanks to the NC stalwarts who are bringing us so much useful information and for equally great comments.
And kate:
George Carlin: “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.” But Naked Capitalism is a broad, sane, kindly-disposed community and I AM in it. And so grateful to be.
This praise means a lot to everyone here. But to be crass, we also need and very much appreciate whatever financial support you can give, be it tens or thousands of dollars (hint: please take a detour right now to the donation page to keep us fit and fierce).
Your support has enabled us to evolve as the world has changed since the global financial crisis. The restoration of a failed status quo ante not only fueled continued rise in inequality (not just in the US but across nations) but even fed the elite belief that they could make shit up law- and policy-wise and get away with it, and that the US could abuse its privileged position (then, by selling rotten securities around the world yet not being held to account by any of the victims, now via increasingly self-and-other destructive measures to hang on to its hegemony).
This success depends on the hard work of a very lean team: our site writers, Lambert, Nick, Conor, and KLG – as well as external regulars such as Michael Hudson, Satyajit Das, Hubert Horan, and albrt, plus independent writers like Thomas Neuburger and Rajiv Sethi. An important sign of Naked Capitalism’s effectiveness is that Rob Urie, George Georgiou, Kevin Kirk, and Vladislav Sotirovic have joined this year. But in turn, a key, often the, reason more and more writers want to post at Naked Capitalism is the engagement with our esteemed, sharp-eyed, energetic, and well-informed commentariat.
Now, to how we have served the Naked Capitalism community since our last fundraiser.
What We Did Last Year: Describing the Future Early Despite More Intense Propaganda and Censorship
In 2024, even more so than in 2023, extreme events are becoming the new normal. Both the emotional challenge of facing that and designed-to-be-numbing narrative control mean that ordinary people can miss opportunities to push back or get out of the way. A few of too-many examples: the bizarre resignation as Covid rolls on, not just directly imposing health costs but credibly causing a whole host of debilities; the chariness about calling the Israeli slaughter in Gaza a genocide and the continued US refusal to rein in Israeli escalation that really could result in nuclear war; world-wide evidence that a climate crisis is coming ahead of schedule, yet no willingness to check even energy-profligate, questionable uses, starting with AI and crypto.
And, sadly, officials and their allies in business and media are, for the most part, doubling down on narrative control and increasingly overt censorship as if tamping down public discontent amounts to problem solving. So we now see variants of “Let them eat censorship” as if that was for the benefit of the great unwashed, as well as regular Orwellianisms, such as depicting Ukraine, which banned opposition press and parties, has suspended elections, and is also a cesspool of corruption, as a bastion of democracy.
Yet despite the information clampdown, Trump has not gone away. The demonized AfD just won an election in Thuringia. Russia is not running out of missiles. China’s progress in chips has not been stymied by US and EU sanctions.
Mind you, the rest of the world is not as captured by Western spin-meistering as the Anglosphere. US “democracy” building in small countries is increasingly recognized as regime change. Honduras is exiting its extradition agreement with the US in the wake of US criticism of Honduras’ support for Venezuela, explicitly stating that it needed to prevent US attempts to overthrow its government. The rise of BRICS has produced more willingness to resist US influence.
This itty-bitty site continues to punch above its weight:
Offering as broad a view of the world as is possible for a small independent news website. This strength has become increasingly to important to many of us, as the US’ overzealous campaign to preserve its hegemony is backfiring while also increasing the intensity and escalatory danger of regional conflicts (well, “backfiring” save from the perspective of US arms merchants).
Our focus, thanks to Conor’s in-depth work, has expanded to include Germany, Italy, and Turkiye, probing the intersection of the socioeconomic, political, and imperial structures in these countries. That means exploring issues like the decline of industry in the EU’s two largest manufacturing centers (Germany and Italy), the effects of Project Ukraine, EU-enforced neoliberalism and the perpetual decline in living standards coupled with the rightward shift of the political “center,” and the reasons for Turkiye’s increasing friction with Washington.
Similarly, in Latin America alone, Nick has covered Mexico’s successful fight against GMO corn to regionally-important developments in smaller economies such as Bolivia, Ecuador and Honduras. If Mexico’s Tequila Crisis and other emerging market debt crises of the 1990s taught us anything (or at least should have), it is that economic problems in the so-called “Global South” can end up having major repercussions for the Global North.
On a completely different front, KLG has opened a window into the practice of medicine and science, focusing on the ways that they are not to our collective advantage.
Closer to our historical beats, Yves continues to examine broader economic questions like de-industrialization, deteriorating demographics, challenges to the dollar, wobbly banks, private equity’s grifting, and the never-ending Kentucky Retirement Systems pension litigation, in concert with Michael Hudson’s career-long focus on the societal costs of creditor-favoring regimes. Lambert continues his relentless focus on elections, and is adding new beats, most recently on labor activism. Thomas Neuburger provides insight (and warranted alarm) on climate change and political dynamics. Satyajit Das weighs in on finance and now well-liked cultural offerings and albrt, on identity as a sociological question.
Our increase in scope includes attracting new writers, such as Rob Urie, George Georgiou, and Kevin Kirk.
Finally, sourcing for daily Links has become richer and and geographically wider, not all dependent on US media, hence better on all matters geopolitical than most other aggregators.
Performing original reporting, including adding critical insight to news stories. One example is the RealPage rental profiteering scheme. ProPublica broke the story in October of 2022. Even though it was widely covered, we added real value by digging into lawsuits, picking up on similar allegations against the company Yardi Systems, looking at DOJ’s withdrawal of Clinton-era rules that allowed for information sharing “safe zones” and what that means for cartel behavior. We may also be the first to connect this rental housing price fixing to the homeless crisis in many of the markets where the scheme is believed to have been most rampant.
Standing up to Google algo-driven censorship, in much the same way that we had fought back against the Washington Post’s “PropOrNot” propaganda story in 2016. Many other small independent financial news websites would have simply buckled under pressure from the big tech giant. After all, it was asking for only a handful of posts to be removed. We are grateful to Matt Taibbi, Rajiv Seithi, and our ad service Investing Channel for taking up our cause.
Sadly, Yves has also been wasting cycles on a particularly baseless defamation case, which has already been dismissed twice but the plaintiff is back. We cannot say more so please do not ask, but this has been an additional stressor and time sink.
Continuing top notch Covid and now syndemic coverage including especially a detailed focus on CDC’s institutional workings. Lambert has also bird-dogged the continued official resistance to #CovidIsAirborne and mask banning efforts.
Extending our work on the cashless economy, where the impact of the CrowdStrike outages have validated our concerns. That includes the, erm, progress of digital identity and central bank digital currencies, particularly in Nigeria. Other sites might consider this topic niche, but it could end up affecting us all sooner or later.
Strengthening core activities. That includes promoting critical thinking through careful parsing of breaking news and maintaining rigorous standards of reporting and analysis in the face of a lapdog mainstream media. We have also maintaining expanded Links while as indicated above widening their geographic scope and adding more non-mainstream media sources. This is effectively an addition to the increase in our daily Links feature during the Trump era from a former maximum of 45 articles and tweets to 55 to 60. This represents a significant extra effort, day in, day out.
We challenge you to identify another publisher that does as much as we do with so little.
Fostering the best commentariat. Naked Capitalism depends on its commentariat. We’ve reluctantly added to our tripwires due to an ever-more heated social media environment. We are very grateful that most of you tolerate getting caught in moderation with good humor. But that means more comments to moderate.
How This Fundraiser Works
Please give as much as you can. $5, $50, or $5,000 are all appreciated. If you can only afford a little, then give a little. If you’re doing well, then please give more.
If you are flush, we hope you’ll include us in your good fortune, not just on our behalf but also for members of the community who have told us they want to help out but are too budget-crunched right now. So can you dig deeper and give more to make up for loyal readers who can’t participate in this fundraiser?
Everything you do – reading, commenting, giving, and sending us information and antidotes – is essential to making this community work. You can help right now by following this link to make a donation.
Our accompanying kickoff post gives a high-level view of what we’d like to do. Over the course of the fundraiser, we identify specific things that your donations will fund and tell you when we’ve hit each of these monetary goals.
The first goal is funding for digital infrastructure essentials.
This plumbing is not very sexy, but imagine what happens when your water is cut off or your power fails! This is a critical foundation for this site, so please help us keep it sound.
Our hosting upgrade (we now have a backup host!), the need for ongoing tweaks plus general inflation means our nut has gotten bigger. So our first target is $25,000. Once we’ve hit that, we’ll let you know what our next item is.
How to Give
There are multiple channels for donating, and you will see them all when you go to our Tip Jar.
We really like checks! To give by check (which saves us PayPal/credit card fees), please make it out in the name of “Aurora Advisors Incorporated” and send it to:
Aurora Advisors Incorporated
PO Box 110105
Brooklyn NY 11211-0105
At the same time, please send an e-mail to yves@nakedcapitalism.com with the headline “Check is in the mail” (and just the $ amount in the message) so we can count your contribution in the total number of donations.
Thanks again for your interest and generous support!
Thanks, Yves and team.
You write: “Both the emotional challenge of facing that and designed-to-be-numbing narrative control mean that ordinary people can miss opportunities to push back or get out of the way. ”
Being able to comment here gives me a way to “push back”, small though my effort may be. / ;)