Hooray! We met our Fourth Goal, Progress to the Fifth: Karōshi Prevention

Thanks to the size of the almost 800 members of the Naked Capitalism community, we have reached our first four goals, our significant budget for IT support/security, supporting the comment section, and thirdly, we continue our extended Link section and offer blogger bonuses ours is not a guest, at a fast pace.

We are now $470 from our new $24,000 target for the Karōshi, also called burnout, barrier.

But as we are, your humble blogger must sound a note of truth. We are behind where we should be in this circle. If you haven’t donated yet, please head over to our Tip Jar and sign in! And if you are in a position to give, please dig deep, both in your own name to support donations from people who have given despite having limited means.

We are well on our way to meeting our fifth goal, additional staff support to make our 365 days a year, nearly 24/7 coverage sustainable.

If Yves the publisher and Yves the worker were two different people, Yves the worker would have been on strike long ago.

Maybe you’ve heard of it karoshi, a Japanese word that roughly translates to “death by overwork”. The Guardian reported on the incident:

Japan has once again been forced to confront its work culture after labor inspectors ruled that the death of a 31-year-old journalist at the country’s public broadcaster, NHK, was 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 that led to her death from heart failure in July 2013….

Sado’s death is expected to increase pressure on Japanese officials to deal with the high death toll caused by the punishment of many workers.

You have shown in the past how important this coverage is. This year, Yves took out a house with 46 years of things in it, did 16 years of renovation and makeover, sold it, dealt with other housing needs, moved overseas_…but did you really notice his absence?

That was due to the good work done by everyone on this site and taking care of him during difficult times… but it was also due to Yves taking as little time as possible… and this year, even a working holiday.

Even though your generous support of the site has allowed him to have a day and a half off from posting each week, and change the daily work of Links to Lambert, this has not translated into Yves’ personal time. Even on his non-posting days, Yves manages the website business, receives and responds to embarrassingly overlooked emails, sometimes conducts research, and often reviews news ideas or articles sent to him.

The main reason the site is spending more writing/production time than in the past is that we’ve been improving our output and expanding our beats. Our links category used to be 25-30 links. Now it’s 55 and sometimes more.

Similarly, when the crisis came, when anyone who knew about finance was a one-eyed man in a land of the blind, most of our posts were only a few hundred words of commentary that were quoted or excerpted from news articles. Now, an important part of what Naked Capitalism does is to quickly analyze political economy at a very high level. We often produce think tank level work but with the aim of removing apathy and making people accountable. That means more time for the writer on average per post.

We joke that we run a site with 1.6 people, although with our increased commitments due to Covid-19, it might be as good as 1.9 writers. Despite the precise figure, it is a way to highlight that it provides an amazing level of output and consistency of coverage with very little resources.

The amount we want for this target is $24,000 for weekends, holidays, and “the worst happens” support. Note that unlike our other goals, we have kept them at the same level as last year. We hope you will see how important this is and donate generously to keep Yves in the fight and have other talented writers like Lambert, Nick, Conor and KLG donate regularly.

Donors keep sending kind notes. A sample. Response from B&J:

I am sending this donation in honor of my brother who recently died. For years he would send us a link to the story Naked Capitalism. It took a while, but eventually the light bulb went off and Naked Capitalism became our go-to place for the latest reading on Covid, economics, world and country events. Each day we read it “to cover” and comment on the informative explanation. I miss not having my brother to discuss the news of the day, but I am always grateful that you opened this great site for us.

I will send a check for $200. Thanks to the whole team for your work in producing this great website. B&J

Answer from Paul M:

I’m sending you a check for $100 today.

I have to admit that I disagree with at least half of what you wrote. But your ideas are so logical, informed and clearly expressed that they always make me think, and sometimes reconsider my own beliefs. Even if I decide you’re wrong, thinking through why I think you’re wrong helps me understand my thoughts better.

Thank you, and good luck with the fundraiser.

And Chris:

I have been (quiet) ever since the 2016 election after a great word from Michael Hudson. I’m embarrassed to say this is my first contribution but I highly recommend Naked Capitalism. I got more than a few “How do you know so much about this?” comments, whether it’s COVID, Ukraine, any kind of financial topics and I always tell them where my first place on the web is every day.

There are many ways to give. The first is here on the blog, Tip Jar, which takes you to PayPal and our new payment service, Clover. There you can use a debit card, credit card or PayPal account (PayPal payment will be in the name of Aurora Consultants).

You can also send a check (we really like checks, no middle man fees!) made out to Aurora Advisors Incorporated to

Aurora Advisors Incorporated
PO Box 110105
Brooklyn NY 11211-0105

Please also send an email to [email protected] with the subject line “Check in the mail” (with just $ in the line of the message) so we can count your contribution towards the total donations.

Our sick days, weekend and vacation coverage target is $24,000, and we are already $470 from that goal. Thank you SO much for your generous support!


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