Naked Capitalism: Getting Through the Stupids to the Important

By a DC insider

So I work in DC, which means that I swim in a sea of irrelevant chatter and gossip masquerading as The Most Important Thing Ever That Must Be Dealt With Now. It’s very annoying, but it’s also impossible to avoid. It’s also why Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and various big grifters can constantly win and game our system. It’s not the money. Yes, they have a lot of money. But they’ve always had a lot of money, and they haven’t always won. It’s because they can pay attention to the long-term while we dance to the tune of the short-term media cycle.

Naked Capitalism is the antidote to this. What you have built – and I speak not just of Yves but of you, the reader, the commenter, the anonymous tipster, the whole community – has cost the bad guys billions of dollars.

Tossing in $10, $100, $1000, or whatever you can afford will pay you back many fold with a better, more stable, and wealthier society. So give via the Tip Jar, which tells you how to donate by check, credit, or debit card. And if you send a check, tell Yves at yves@nakedcapitalism. Put “Check is in the mail” in the subject line and tell her how much is en route so she can include your contribution in her running tally.

The reason is simple. You guys can pay attention to what I cannot. You can pay attention to, say, private equity, and not just to ‘oh private equity is kind of a scam with leverage’, but to the intricate details of specific deals, fees, regulatory institutions and the players within them, and the actual investors who make decisions about where to invest. Yves can write about CALPERS, and get officials fired. And other officials notice. Hundreds of billions of dollars of capital, and the trillions that follow CALPERS and its leadership, notice.

No one’s been paying attention to these people before. So their world has become entombed in cobwebs, corruption, and fecklessness. But now you are paying attention, in a way that is meaningful and actionable. And because you are, so am I. And so are many other policymakers. This means that the bad guys are losing their grip on the world. Because of you. Because of the time, energy, and focus you bring.

So extend this effort just a little bit, and give.

For a small amount of money, you can cost the bad guys a very large amount of money. And spite in pursuit of justice is not only righteous, it’s fun.

Now, we’re often told that this is the case, that we’re on the verge of winning. Well it may not always look like it, but we are. Both party platforms contained Glass-Steagall this year, something you won’t hear on the news because the news is dumb. But that’s evidence that the community here has had a powerful impact on the very structures that underpin our culture. These structures are not covered by the news, but again, the news is dumb.

So give.

Ok, now I will point out something that is obvious, but that Yves doesn’t like to talk about. Her time is valuable, and running this site costs money. Not a huge amount of money, not like a few hours of salary for John Stumpf at Wells Fargo, or a few minutes of salary for Jeff Bezos, but enough money to pay the contributors and keep the roof from caving in. It’s money that is extremely well spent. Because it’s not just that the veneer of intellectual conceit that the bad guys rely on is falling apart, it’s that people are starting to realize that we need a more sustainable and equitable society if we are going to survive as a species.

And Yves runs one of the only communities that actually knows how to structure a financial system that can run such a society. So give. Your very life may depend on it. Or not. Either way, spite is fun.

Support these efforts. Give whatever you can, whether it’s $5, $50, or $5000, via the Tip Jar, which tells you how to donate by check, credit, or debit card. And if you send a check, tell Yves at yves@nakedcapitalism. Put “Check is in the mail” in the subject line and tell her how much is en route so she can include your contribution in her running tally.

And you’ll have a good place to hang out in the comments and make fun of the rulers of the world.