Matt Stoller: Naked Capitalism – A Lighthouse for Our Morality and a Community to Be Reckoned With

By Matt Stoller, author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy and the research director of the American Economic Liberties Project who writes regularly at Substack

I’m a former writer for Naked Capitalism, and someone who has learned a lot over the years from Yves Smith and the crew here. I spend a lot of time focused on laws against monopolization, which is to say, antitrust. And despite the fact antitrust is what I do, I still learn about the broader impact of policy from this site.

Take the piece from a few days ago by Conor Gallagher on how the suit against landlords and RealPage has caused a spike in homelessness. Gallagher connected investment in RealPage to dozens of public pension funds, showing the truth today of what Louis Brandeis once noted, that “The fetters which bind the people are forged from the people’s own gold.”

But Brandeis had another phrase, which I really love, and which bears upon why Naked Capitalism matters. “Despotism, be it financial or political, is vulnerable, unless it is believed to rest upon a moral sanction. The longing for freedom is ineradicable. It will express itself in protest against servitude and inaction unless the striving for freedom be made to seem immoral.”

The truth of oppression is that it is done with the assent of the public, not because we accept it willingly, but because we come to believe that we cannot resist. And yet, we can. And it is voices like those you read on this site who remind us of that, a lighthouse for our morality. In these dark times, times when most seem confused and frustrated, it is the donations that you provide that helps keep that light on.

So if you can, give. Give generously. Please go to the donation page to support this community.

And if you cannot, that is ok. Just read and learn, because we must all keep that light on, for ourselves.

Over the years, Naked Capitalism has, like our world, changed substantially. New writers have floated in, old ones have left, and the topics have shifted.

I started reading this site in 2006, when the financial crisis was starting its earth-shaking rumbles, and no one knew anything about what was going on. Yves Smith actually delved into the details, as a lone voice describing the machinations of the mortgage market. Yves actually figured out that the establishment narrative was bullshit, figuring out that a few predatory hedge funds were rigging the credit markets. But she followed this as a financial and a political story, ignoring the artificial divisions the press likes to carve out by separating their government and banking coverage.

(Also, she knew the Michael Lewis narrative was bullshit years before he came out with his absurd book on Sam Bankman-Fried. I know that’s not relevant to this piece, but you can never say enough about Lewis’s self-promotional nonsense.)

And it mattered. And not because of one lone dissident writer, but because Naked Capitalism was a community where the genuinely curious could gather and learn from one another, a place where we could all realize that no, we’re not crazy, the men in suits are actually doing things beyond belief.

Today the topics and writers have changed, but the detail-oriented writing and sense of outrage hasn’t. It’s as likely I’ll see something on Nigeria’s disastrous experiment with digital currencies, Honduras leaving the neoliberal international investor tribunal system, or rental collusion and homelessness.

And something else hasn’t changed. The courage. Naked Capitalism, like a lot of independent sites, is under threat by Google, told to shape up or get de-listed from the internet. Most publishers just fold up shop under threat, but not this community. You guys fight back, win or lose. This site, this community, agree or not, is one that must be reckoned with.

And that’s worth preserving. So give, if you can. Please go to the Tip Jar to keep Naked Capitalism fit and fierce.

I don’t always agree with what you write. In fact, I often don’t. But I read Naked Capitalism, and the commenters (love you guys!) because there’s a heterodox style of thinking based on details and substance. That’s critical. I often don’t know who to trust, and I know in my area that a lot of the writing and coverage is nonsense. But I have worked with Yves, written for Yves, and read Yves for years. And I know I can trust you to operate free from fear. And that’s worth something. In fact, it’s worth a lot.

I say this every, but I’ll say it again because it’s still true. If you believe, as I do, that a community of truth matters, then give what you can. If you have a lot, give a lot at the donation page. If you have nothing, then give words of encouragement. It all matters.

If you can’t afford anything, you can still help by spreading the word about Naked Capitalism by telling friends and family, circulating important stories, posting links on Facebook (or Meta), Twitter (or X) and other horrible social media sites that keep changing their names because everyone hates them.

And now let’s talk politics for a second. My grandfather had a joke that I think applies to the world today, and to the upcoming Presidential election. One day, I was feeling down, and my friend said, cheer up, things could be worse. So, I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse.

But on the other hand, it’s not all bleak. At least one of them is going to lose. And either way, we’ll still have this site where we can come together and stare in disbelief at our elites and how stupid they are.