Hooray! Met Our Fourth Goal, On to Our Fifth: Karōshi Prevention

Thanks to the magnanimity of nearly 800 members of the Naked Capitalism community, we’ve met our first four targets, our critical budget for IT support/defenses, supporting the comments section, and the third, continuing our expanded Links section and providing bonuses for our guest bloggers, at a solid pace.

We are now at $470 towards our new target of $24,000 for Karōshi, aka burnout, prevention.

But being who we are, your humble blogger must sound a note of reality. We are still behind where we need to be in this fundraiser. If you haven’t donated yet, please take a detour to our Tip Jar and chip in! And if you are in a position to be generous, please dig deep, both on your behalf to bolster the donations from people who gave despite having limited means.

We are on our way to meeting our fifth target, support for extra manpower so we can make our 365 day a year, just about 24/7 coverage more sustainable.

If Yves the publisher and Yves the employee were two different people, Yves the employee would have gone on strike a long time ago.

Perhaps you’ve heard of karōshi, a Japanese word that translates roughly into “death by overwork”. The Guardian reported on this phenomenon:

Japan has again been forced to confront its work culture after labour inspectors ruled that the death of a 31-year-old journalist at the country’s public broadcaster, NHK, had been caused by overwork.

Miwa Sado, who worked at the broadcaster’s headquarters in Tokyo, logged 159 hours of overtime and took only two days off in the month leading up to her death from heart failure in July 2013….

Sado’s death is expected to increase pressure on Japanese authorities to address the large number of deaths attributed to the punishingly long hours expected of many employees.

You’ve shown in the past how essential this coverage is. This year, Yves cleared out a house with 46 years worth of stuff in it, did 16 year of deferred maintenance and cosmetic fix ups, got it sold, dealt with other estate demands, moved overseas_…but did you even much notice her absences?

That was due to the great job everyone on this site does and covering for her during crunch times… but it was also due to Yves taking off as little time as possible…and this year, not even a working holiday.

Even though your generous support of the site have allowed her to have a day and a half off from posting every week, and shift more of daily Links duty to Lambert, this hasn’t translated into more personal time for Yves. Even on her days off from posting, Yves is managing the business of the site, discovering and responding to e-mails she embarrassingly didn’t see, sometimes catching up on research, and often vetting story ideas or articles pitched to her.

A big reason that the site consumes more writing/production time than in the past is that we’ve kept improving our output and expanding our beats. Our Links section used to be 25-30 links. It is now 55 and sometimes more.

Similarly, in runup to the crisis, when anyone who knew about finance was a one-eyed man in the land of the blind, many of our posts had only a few hundred words of commentary on an extract or extracts from news articles. Now, a significant portion of what Naked Capitalism does is quick turn-around political economy analysis of a very high caliber. We often produce think tank level work but with the aim of stripping away obfuscation and holding people accountable. That means more writer time on average per post.

We joke that we run the site with 1.6 people, although with our increased commitment as a result of Covid-19, it might be up to 1.9 writer equivalents. Regardless of the precise figure, it’s a way to highlight that we provide a remarkable level of output and the consistency of coverage with very thin resources.

The amount we are seeking for this target, $24,000 for weekend, holiday, and “shit happens” support. Note that unlike our other targets, we have kept this at the same level as last year. We hope you’ll recognize how essential this is and donate generously to keep Yves in fighting fettle and have other talented writers like Lambert, Nick, Conor and KLG contribute more regularly.

Donors keep sending kind notes. A sampling. From B&J:

I am sending this donation honoring my recently deceased brother. For years he would send us an occassional link to a story in Naked Capitalism. It took a while, but finally a light bulb went off and Naked Capitalism became our go-to read on the latest regarding Covid, economics, world and national events. Each day we read it “cover to cover” plus the comments of the well informed commentariat. I miss not having my brother to discuss these issues of the day, but always grateful he tuned us in to this great site.

I will mail a check for $200. Thank you to the entire team for your work producing this great site. B&J

From Paul M:

I’m sending you a check for $100 today.

I must admit I disagree with at least half of what you write. But your opinions are so rational, informed and clearly expressed that they always make me think, and sometimes reconsider my own beliefs. Even when I decide you’re wrong, thinking through why I think you’re wrong enables me to understand my own thoughts better.

Thank you, and good luck with the fundraising drive.

And Chris:

I’ve been a (silent) regular since right around the 2016 election after a good word from Michael Hudson. I’m ashamed to say this is my first donation but I have recommended Naked Capitalism far and wide. I’ve gotten more than a few “How do you know so much about this?” remarks, whether it’s COVID, Ukraine, or any manner of financial topics and I always tell them where my first stop on the web is everyday.

There are multiple ways to give. The first is here on the blog, the Tip Jar, which takes you to PayPal and our new payment service, Clover. There you can use a debit card, a credit card or a PayPal account (the charge for PayPal will be in the name of Aurora Advisors).

You can also send a check (we really like checks, no middleman fees!) in the name of Aurora Advisors Incorporated to

Aurora Advisors Incorporated
PO Box 110105
Brooklyn NY 11211-0105

Please also send an e-mail to yves@nakedcapitalism.com with the headline “Check is in the mail” (and just the $ en route in the message) so we can count your contribution in the total number of donations.

Our sick days, weekend and vacation coverage target is $24,000, and we are already at $470 towards that goal. Thanks SO much for your generous support!