Thanks to the magnanimity of nearly 1200 members of the Naked Capitalism community, we’ve met our first five targets, our critical budget for IT support/defenses, supporting the comments section, continuing our popular Coffee Break/Sunday movie features, funding our expanded Links section and providing bonuses for our guest bloggers, at a solid pace.
We are still behind where we need to be to continue the sort of coverage in 2026 that you have come to expect. We have been closing that gap due to reader responses to our alarms, particularly a new donor challenge yesterday. So please, if you haven’t contributed already, proceed straight to our Tip Jar and give bigly! 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 now at $2,470 towards our new target of $24,000 for Karōshi, aka burnout, prevention.
Our sixth goal is 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.
Readers have told us enthusiastically about how strong our current team is. One of the ways that they are terrific that may not be as obvious as the caliber of their post is the way covering for Yves during crunch times. But even with their considerable help, Yves takes off as little time as possible…and that includes no vacation :-(.
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 often 65 and sometimes more.
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. But the breathers she does get thanks to your support make a huge difference and are deeply appreciated.
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.
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 in the past two years. We hope you’ll recognize how essential this is and donate generously to keep Yves in fighting fettle and have other talented writers like Nick, Conor, KLG, Haig, Nat, Curro and semper loqitur contribute more regularly.
Donors keep sending kind notes. A sampling. From Chris L:
I’m nearing ten years of readership here and I, hanging on to the remnants of the public sector civil service (state, but a blue “enemy within” state), am able to lend a hand.
This is consistently, preciously, no bullshit informative stuff. As the Information Age, such as it was, has devolved into confused slop powered by hallucinating AI it really means something to have a place moored to the real world and what matters. Even with turnover in staff the quality, continuity, and focus never wavered.
From Rick:
Saw Yves’ plea today. This blog *can’t* go down. It is needed. I remember my shock when CKM at Some Assembly Required quit. We can’t afford to lose this site, or have it become diminished.
All of your new contributors are great, for me Nat Turner and KLG are outstanding in an accomplished group. This additional contribution is in recognition of and gratitude for all the new regular contributors.
And Beth W:
I am mailing in a $30 check in for the fundraiser. This is all I can do right now, but you and the other writers deserve so much more. Naked Capitalism is the only site that keeps me informed and semi-sane! Thanks for all you do!
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!
