Countdown!

Readers have made an amazing response to our final appeal, for $16,000 to fund more original reporting. Since our last update, a mere few hours ago, we went from being 34 shy of meeting our donor goal of 1200 to a mere three donors short. And we were then $560 below our $16,000 goal but have now exceeded it by $1250!

Only three hours remain in the Naked Capitalism fundraiser. Show your support of critical thinking, merciless evisceration of lame punditry, deep diving into turbid financial waters, and cute animal pictures.

Every dollar you give now goes to support more original reporting. And that does have an impact, even when the mainstream media does not validate our efforts directly. For instance, when we have nine whistleblowers come forward and expose what a sham the OCC Independent Foreclosure Reviews were, one Congressional staffer told us: “No one in the press tried defending the reviews, not even the OCC. That was the result of your work.”

Similarly, earlier this week, we published two posts on the AIG bailout trial, both of which contained important new information challenging the official story on the supposed necessity of having AIG be nationalized while no banks, many of whom were every bit as insolvent and engaged in far worse conduct, got off with no executives fired, much the less prosecuted, and went on to pay themselves record bonuses in 2009 and 2010. That post in turn led to follow-up commentary by Matt Stoller and a Twitter fight between Dave Dayen and the banking industry’s chief apologist, Andrew Ross Sorkin, over how Sorkin missed a big part of the bailout story. That sort of amplification and discussion (and well deserved shellacking) helps shift the bounds of discourse among journalists, who even in this era of diminished reporting, still have considerable sway.

Be one of the last three to push our fundraiser over the top. Let’s see if we can get to 1200 donors and provide even more funding for original reporting before the close of this effort, midnight PST. Every donation helps get us towards our goals and make this site even better. Perhaps one of you can take up the request of reader jp:

I am donating, even though I am severely underemployed. If one o’ yews could do Yves and Lambert a favor and donate a “pass it fwd” thing, I would appreciate it a lot, my donation is so small it’s pitiful.

But I needed to do that, more as a statement then a useful contribution. I have been reading NC for a while, but only in the last year have I fully begun to understand the importance and depth it brings (now) twice a day.

Hope it goes on, we need it.

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

You can also send a check (or multiple post dated checks) in the name of Aurora Advisors Incorporated to

Aurora Advisors Incorporated
903 Park Avenue, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10075

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) to have your contribution included in the total number of donations.

Again, I’m overwhelmed by this response from readers. Lambert and I want to give a big thanks to all of you who have donated already. If you can give a little, give a little. If you can give more, give more. If you can give a lot, give a lot. You are investing in creating a different debate, a different vision, and a different, more just society.