Readers,

This has been a lively year, but an especially creative year for the Naked Capitalism songwriting commentariat. Thanks go to albrt, Antifa, Britzklieg, Camelotkidd , Caucus99percenter , Cgregory, ChrisFromGA , Daryl, Ewmayer, Flora, HenryMoonPie, Ignacio, JaburaBasaidai, LilD, MarkGisleson, Mrsyk, SteveH, ThirtyOne, and Wukchumni for this year’s edition of The Naked Capitalism Songbook, Volume Three. These songs are free gifts from the writers to the Naked Capitalism community. And you can give back to that community — and to the site that makes it possible — by going to the Tip Jar, placed conveniently to your right.

Making a 242-page Songbook, with indexes for song titles, song writers, and the performers who inspired the songs, is an enormous task. Bookwork, like American football, is a game of inches, where consistency and precision matter above all. Here I must give an enormous shoutout to reader Antifa, who handled the aggregation, production, and design work, and uncomplainingly updated the file with the corrections that moderator Katiebird discovered (“If you haven’t found an error, you haven’t proofread carefully enough!”). We must also thank John Zelnicker, who initiated what has become a continuing, yearly project. You can – you know what I’m going to say here – reward their efforts at the Tip Jar.

Again, the Songbook is free. We do not offer the Songbook as a premium to paid subscribers, or as a promotional tchotchke. In fact, that’s the whole point. The songwriters freely give the songs to the community, amd the commmunity in turn laughs, sings, and creates more songs. Naked Capitalism then creates the Songbook from their gifts, which returns the community’s work to the community in a virtuous cycle, so you can send this community’s work to friends, family, and colleagues, particularly fans of pop music or those with a sardonic sense of humor.

But we do hope that those who were planning to give but haven’t yet might take the Songbok as a reminder of the rich offerings in Naked Capitalism posts and in the comments section. If you haven’t yet gotten around to making a donation yet, please make a mini-detour to the Tip Jar and donate to support this community. Anything you can give, $5, $50, or $5,000, helps keep us fit and feisty.

Here it is!

2024_Songbook-Three-compressed

P.S. Last year’s Songbooks are here.

This entry was posted in Guest Post, Notices on by Lambert Strether.

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.