It’s fundraiser time! If you love Naked Capitalism and know you intend to give, get this campaign off to a fast start. Proceed directly to the Tip Jar and give bigly!
Over the past year, readers have made far more enthusiastic comments about Naked Capitalism than ever. For instance:
From Seneca:
What this NC website does is beyond praise. It’s almost staggering, how good it is. Needless to say, I need to get my a** in gear and make a donation soon. Thank you to all the commentators as well.
From David Pearl:
I started reading your blog shortly after you started publishing it.
At the time I was at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (I was the fifth staffer, the first with a mortgage finance experience, at the predecessor agency, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, in 1993), but in the mid-80s I was a mortgage finance banker at Kidder Peabody and Goldman Sachs. I was in the room when FHFA took over Fannie and Freddie. So Michael Lewis’ books Liar’s Poker (I worked with some of those guys at Kidder) and The Big Short bookended my career in mortgage finance.
When you started writing about the impending Financial Crisis, in 2006 or so, you wrote about what I saw happening. I was a voice in the wilderness at FHFA. The few times I would suggest reading an NK post people would roll their eyes.
Anyway, NK is a treasure. Our politics line up. Looking over your links is as important to me as looking at NYTimes headlines (for me a source of my eye-rolls). Thank you for your excellent coverage of the Ukraine and Iran wars. Thank you for what you do.
From Goingnowhereslowly:
Yves and company, thank you, thank you, thank you for all your excellent and very difficult work! I can’t imagine my life without you and this community.
And you’ve praised our increased depth and scope of our coverage thanks to Haig Hovaness, Nat Turner Wilson, Curro Jiminez and semperloquitur joining our highly accomplished mainstays, Nick Corbishley, Conor Fitzgerald and KLG. A few of many many examples:
From dandyandy:
Great work Nat, thank you very much. NC has really grown in stature recently. A few years back it was my little secret source of information and now a ton of people, intelligent and honest people, are lifting it up. Thank you Yves and your fantastic Team!”
From Es s Ce Tera:
A good exploration of yet another unforeseen consequence. Thank you, Curro!
And Traveller:
Thanks for creating and continuing such a great series/project. You’ve brought a delightful spread of films to my attention that I had not yet found and might’ve never stumbled across. Additionally, it really rounds out both the website and the week. All the extras are absolutely gravy. Thank you Col. Loquitur.
But we cannot survive on praise alone! We really do depend on your donations. So please go to the Tip Jar which tells you how to give by credit or debit card, check, or Paypal. Every donation, small or super-sized, helps keep up our relentless search for the most important information, sorting the signal from the noise, and continuing our record of being early and accurate.
Our bigger team means more extensive coverage but also a bigger nut to cover. So now is the time to help us do even more on behalf of this community. Again, the Tip Jar is calling your name.
At this juncture, we take a broader view of the year past and what may be coming. We’ve described the trajectory as the early stages of breakdown. Events, including global warming, are smashing through old boundaries. It would have been deemed borderline cray cray even a year ago to think Trump might declare martial law to prevent the midterms from occurring, oh, and perhaps launch nukes. An obviously insane “bet the economy” AI bubble is blowing even bigger as hyperscalers and their labs have entered into take-or-pay contracts with the “pay” starting in 2027 and 2028, with no prospect of adequate profits and much cheaper Chinese models breathing down their necks. One bright spot is that rising public opposition may stymie global-warming intensifying, water supply harming data center buildouts.
The US has also been practicing geopolitical self-sabotage in its war with Iran. But this is continuity of policy. Biden Administration officials and their European counterparts were giddy on the eve of the Ukraine conflict, certain that they could produce Russia regime change and even foster a break-up. When Russia did not collapse under shock and awe sanctions, the West was ill prepared for Russia’s preferred way of fighting, attrition. Now the Europeans are schizophrenically plotting how to wage war with Russia despite a clear lack of capability even as the Ukraine end game approaching as Russia blockades Odessa, takes apart Ukraine’s grid, power generation and now logistics, and pounds Kiev.
So US over-investment in Project Ukraine drained treasure and weapons. The Iran War has shown how hollowed out the US military has become, and worse, how it has not and is still not adapting to the new world of fighting cheaply yet with mass and precision via drones, missiles, and improved surveillance. And Trump keeps doubling down and making the enfeebled state of US forces more acute and unduly visible.
And that’s before getting to the consequences of Iran deploying its best weapon, the choking of the Strait of Hormuz and Ansar Allah piling on even more fiercely in disabling Saudi petroleum exports. Higher food and energy prices, particularly of diesel, are increasing inflation and with it, bond yields. The agriculture inputs crunch plus a super El Nino will raise food prices, particularly of grains, even more in 2027 with the potential for shortages and even famine.
Most of the world has been slack-jawed as Israel becomes only more savage in its Gaza genocide but it now brutalizing southern Lebanon and terrorizing the West Bank; UK-led sanctions on settler trade are better than nothing but awfully late in coming.
These and other developments, like the scale and brazenness of Trump’s corruption or the swift rise of authoritarianism in the UK and Europe, would have been deemed insanely alarmist if forecast a few years ago. They are not a bad new normal, but signs of compounding ruptures: of rule of law, both international law and at the nation-state level; of norms like decency, responsibility, and self-discipline; of competence, from elite inability to manage problems to widespread abandonment of planning and maintenance.
We anticipated this outcome in the finance and economic realm in the wake of the financial crisis. From ECONNED:
Paradigm breakdown, meaning key elements of the current system are no longer viable, but that is a possibility that no one is prepared to face, since the old system seemed to work well for a protracted period. Thus the authorities reflexively put duct tape on the machinery rather than hazard a teardown….
Any resolution of the major problems facing the financial system would take a good deal of time, care, and persistent effort, and would simultaneously be highly politicized….That in turn means the current paradigm will be patched up and restored to service only to fail again. This pattern will replay until the breakdown is beyond repair.
One can tell a similar but far more complex tale of the in-progress breakdown of the post World War II Western geopolitical order.
Just as dam bursts produce cascading floods, here chipping away at pro-safety practices, from social protections to favoring diplomacy over force to laws that protect not just individuals but also preserve commercial and political legitimacy, has produced widespread weaknesses in organizations and systems that are now cracking under the stress.
We believe our commitment to promoting critical thinking has become more vital than ever. Just as in the runup to the crisis, our warning that a very bad outcomes looked increasingly likely, helped many take self-preservation measures, from lightening up on stocks to steering clear of big risks before a probably downdraft. Many have told us our Covid coverage saved lives. Compounding ruptures, from power to water to food to financial security, means it will be even harder than before to find the high ground.
Having the best information and analysis possible increases the odds of taking prudent protections to reduce possible harm. But that has become even harder over time due to the successful capture of hollowed-out mainstream reporting by corporations and government. Mind you, the relationship of the major press organs with government, particularly on geopolitical issue, has always been cozier than they would admit. But a Pentagon Papers or even Snowden files level show of opposition seems inconceivable now. Reporting was once a bastion for bright and energetic writers from blue collar backgrounds. Newsrooms are now firmly in the hands of graduates of elite or at least pretty good colleges.
This lack of journalistic pushback has accelerated an informational downsprial. Not just Trump but many officials tell flagrant Big Lies, like Russia is approaching economic collapse while also set soon to march to the Seine. But these fabrications, particularly when made fast after a story has broken, are cognitively sticky. Worse, too many nominal experts repeat them (even if in a watered-down form) when they’ve been disproven in later news cycles. So it’s continuing to take even more heavy lifting to get to the bottom of important events.
But our ability to give early and properly-calibrated alerts has been due in no small measure to the considerable input of the many intensely observant experts and keen thinkers in the commentariat. Many of our external writers, such as Michael Hudson, Satyajit Das, Rob Urie, albrt, and Tom Neuburger, say they value the way readers carefully consider their articles and give detailed reactions….even when they are critical. Like the regular authors, the keen eyes and razor-sharp reasoning in this community keep all of us on our toes.
We believe this last year has confirmed that Naked Capitalism continues to occupy a position very few sites have attained, that of providing near-think-tank level analysis on a breaking news-cycle basis. That has resulted in Naked Capitalism being one of the best small sites in the range, depth, quality and timeliness of geopolitical and economic coverage. That’s because our team keeps getting even better over time, not just in their experience, insights, commitment to rigor, but also their discipline. As they say in theater, each and every writer always his his marks.
But even with this high level of dedication and professionalism, we really do depend on your support to keep Naked Capitalism fit and fierce. Please go straight to the Tip Jar and give generously.
Some examples from this year:
Conor Gallagher on how US monopoly capitalism has flooded the worldk, with numerous case examples, from how US oligardch have cut the ground out from under their own feet to Irrational responses to crisis of capital accumulation and more specifc operations, such as the Ukrainization of Europe and the Kushner Albanian island caper;
Nick Corbishley on US and Israel election-meddling around the world, age verification as Trojan horse for digital IDs, the Trump Administration’s continuing assault against Latin American states asserting sovereigniy, such as attacking Brazil’s cheap and cheerful digital payments system;
KLG on science, medicine, politics and class warfare, such as how economists invented infinite growth, quackitude, food politics, and the deteriorating state of medical education in the US;
Nat Wilson Turner on connecting the dots between Trump’s corruption and violence, attempted Zionist takeover of US media, the Iran War, corrupt Dem centrists and the AI bubble: all of which is being profited from and directed by competing groups of very similar people;
Haig Hovaness’ “Armed Madhouse,” on drone warfare and its refinement in the Ukraine war, the limits of US naval power, as shown with China and the practical limits on submarine warfare, the role of Starlink, and trust engineering;
Curro Jiminez on the paramount importance of winning to US elites, the Ceuta migrant surge as a far-right psyops, on Palantir as a vanguard in restructuring classes in the US and preserving US dominance abroad
semper loquitur’s Sunday morning movie feature, which has expanded from a wide range of foreign films to classics to horror to the best of schlock, to include music, and assorted delights to the Naked Capitalism community
And yours truly with regular Iran war updates, with sightings on AI, the state of the dollar and bond markets, and Trump’s efforts to turn the military and ICE into implements of personal power,
We’d like to do more. We’d like to do it even better. Imagine how much trouble we could cause if we got some serious money!
Please support our efforts. Give whatever you can, whether it’s $5, $50, or $5,000, via our Tip Jar. Even a small donation helps us meet our fundraising goals. If you can, please give generously, particularly on behalf of loyal readers who aren’t able to donate as much as they’d like to.
And if you can’t make a financial contribution, rest assured you can still help! More than ever, we depend on all of you to promote Naked Capitalism and bring in more readers. Send articles, Links, and Coffee Breaks to potentially receptive friends, family members, and colleagues. Link to our posts on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, talki up the site, make comments and send cute animal photos.
In our accompanying kickoff post, we describe what your donations will fund and tell you when we’ve hit each of these monetary goals. Our first goal is $27,000 for digital infrastructure essentials and sadly, new demands like combatting AI bot scraping which if not addressed would really degrade site performance. That may not sound very sexy, but this is our plumbing. When your plumbing is not working, I bet you notice! So a round of applause for our tech guru Dave for keeping everything running so smoothly. For instance, from jo6pac:
I want to say Thanks to Dave in NC IT for helping me be able to read NC again. The problem was my puter and not NC.
We particularly like checks! No processor fees! But you might have to be patient with the state of USPS 🙁
Please make checks out to “Aurora Advisors Incorporated,” sent to:
Aurora Advisors Incorporated
PO Box 110105
Brooklyn NY 11211-0105
Be sure to let us know if you have sent a check so we can add your contribution to our fundraiser tally. Please send an e-mail with the subject line, “Check is in the mail” with the $ amount, to yves-at-nakedcapitalism-dot-com. The next lowest fee option is a debit card via our merchant processor, Clover.
You can also use the Tip Jar to donate by credit card, debit card using Clover or PayPal. Please note they both allow you to use your regular credit or debit card. Or if you use Wise, please e-mail yves-at-nakedcapitalism-dot-com. with “Wise” in the subject line for instructions.
We also want to warn you: as much as we feel very guilty about it, we lack the capacity to thank donors individually. Or to put it another way, with our thin staffing, we’d have to cut way back on posting to be able to do that. Please forgive us for having to give top priority to continuing to generate the content you appreciate so much.
Again, we hope you’ll support our work in ways big and small. You’ve helped us build a community, and with your continued backing, we aspire to make it even better in the coming year.
