Last year, for the fundraiser, I wrote about the importance of Naked Capitalism in my own personal journey and warned that it was even more critical since we seem to be heading into the teeth of a generational crisis.
Let’s review reasons Naked Capitalism has been invaluable to me over the past two decades of crazy and stupid:
So to bolster this bastion against ever rising cray cray, please go to the Tip Jar and give as if your sanity depended on it. Because it actually might.
The Professional Managerial Class Abandons the Field
This year I want to talk about something frightening I’ve noticed among my peers – mostly retired or nearing retirement age educated professionals: an almost universal apathy and willful refusal to engage with “the news.”
This is a perfectly rational response to the impossible emotional and cognitive impact of the sheer volume of information hurled at us from every direction and the openly malevolent manipulative agendas of corporate media and the oligarchy that controls it.
Power Steps Up Its Game
John Michael Greer once wrote in a series of essays about the primacy of binary thinking in human decision-making – arguing that we evolved to make snap life-or-death judgements between threat/nonthreat, predator/prey, friend/foe – that:
…the binary reaction is meant to produce snap judgments in stressful situations, and it has no gray areas at all; a distant bit of color in a tree is either food or it’s not, the snap of a twig breaking in the forest behind you is either a predator or it’s not, and our australopithecine ancestors didn’t normally have to cope with things that were partly food and partly a predator, and might turn into one or the other depending on how a set of complex processes went. They also didn’t, as far as we know, have to deal with other australopithecines trying to convince them that food was predators and predators were food.
It’s hard to come up with a more elegant description of our current dilemma, except that those other australopithecines are armed with infinitely larger resources, armies of allies and shills, and technologies of distraction, confusion, diversion, surveillance, lawfare, and persuasion that no previous generation of human beings has ever had to deal with.
Naked Capitalism is comparable to Tolkien’s Rivendell – the last homely house – a safe haven of sanity – where we can take comfort and collaborate with friends and allies before heading back to Mordor to resume battle with the forces of corruption and domination. (I’m a nerd, sue me). But in lieu of Elvish magic, we rely on your support for this sanctuary. So please proceed to the donation page and give generously.
We’re On Our Own, But Thanks to Naked Capitalism We’re Not Alone
And just as Rivendell was protected by Elrond’s Ring of Power, the Naked Capitalism community is protected by Yves’ judgment and leadership and our shared efforts to delineate consensus reality.
We’re not settling on a preferred narrative and then pushing a party line (a road to perdition if there ever was one) at Naked Capitalism; the community actually argues through what is really happening and adjusts its opinions as the evidence changes.
The polycrisis is only escalating, as more and more people drop out of the debate due to fatigue or addledness; NC becomes all the more critical to support and sustain.
It may be that our role is merely to keep the spark lit, to keep the flame alive, to pass it along to successors who will be able to overthrow the plutocrats and restore some degree of sanity and human value to our government and social organization.
If so, so be it. But remember, that was how the generations of Black activists after the failure of Reconstruction and the imposition of Jim Crow apartheid saw themselves, and ultimately they succeeded in saving enough wisdom and insight to guide the civil rights generation to its triumphs in the 1960s.
Of course, those triumphs were short-lived, but they have yet to be entirely reversed, and I don’t expect the battle between those who seek to dominate and exploit and those who seek to be free of domination and to share our gifts widely to ever end.
Naked Capitalism is essential to the fight to preserve and protect what is good about civilization.
And we’re no relic. In the 2020s, NC has produced some of its best and most compelling work on critical topics like:
Modern Financial Manipulation
AI Off-Balance-Sheet Obligations Hit a Subprime-Like Reset Wall in 2027 and 2028 · AI Datacenter Borrowing “Frenzy” · Dimon, the IMF and the Bank of England · the final stage of the AI bubble · Private Equity Is Coming for Your 401(k)
War and Rumors of War
Understanding Iranian Victory · the limits of escalation · Iran Defeated The US Empire · Bessent’s flailing and the Strait of Hormuz · The Rules-Based Nuclear Bomb
Psychopaths in Power
Do You Trust Epstein Elite With Nuclear Weapons? · The Epstein Files as a Weapon · “NatSec Democrats” · the Democratic Party’s self destruction
Propaganda and Manipulation
Narrative Wars as US Media Struggles to Manufacture Consent · Team Trump as Narrative War Captives · propaganda and humanitarian work · Ukraine’s three-pronged infowar campaign
Deliberate Population Reduction?
Social Murder as a Necropolitical Governance Technology · Culling the Herd? · making the next pandemic more likely · Why Are They Trying to Kill Us? · American life expectancy · Why ‘Entitlements’ Cuts May Succeed
Neo-Colonialism
Ukraine’s untenable position and inevitable loss · The West’s ethical framework · Don’t Look Away · “Regime change” in Venezuela
The Modern Prairie Rebellion and Its Causes
5 Ways Data Centers Endanger Their Local Communities · The Kansas community fighting data centers · US consumers are footing the tariff bill
In last year’s fundraising appeal, I told of my involvement in the “netroots movement” (hell I co-wrote a book about it) and how that led me to discover Naked Capitalism.
I also wrote:
A very few blogs had led me in this direction: Matt Stoller’s BOPNews, Sean Paul Kelly’s The Agonist, Ian Welsh’s work at Firedoglake, Stirling Newberry.
But of all those only the Naked Capitalism community survives. That’s no accident.
And that’s the thing about this place: it’s not a byline or two; it’s an independently hosted community — it’s not owned by Meta or Elon Musk or Substack — it’s owned by Yves Smith.
And we’ve shown in the last year that she still has an eye for talent and a knack for pulling diverse voices into a coherent whole.
When Lambert retired in 2025, the community thanked him, celebrated his work and quickly took up the waders and moved on through the muck.
I was late to the party, coming on in mid-summer 2025, but when Yves needed to travel at the height of the Ramadan War, I was honored to step in and, with the community’s help and support, was able to fill her mighty waders for a few days.
We’ve built something special here; let’s keep it going.
Please go to the donation page and support this community. Now.
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