Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday, April 28, 2008

Finance industry to Fed - don't fence me in

By Libby



Since it appears it would take Congress three days short of never to address the mortgage situation, the Fed is attempting to step in and issue some new regulatory controls on lending. Needless to say the financiers are not happy

As the Federal Reserve completes work on rules to root out abuses by lenders, its plan has run into a buzz saw of criticism from bankers, mortgage brokers and other parts of the housing industry. One common industry criticism is that at a time of tight credit, tighter rules could make many mortgages more expensive by creating more paperwork and potentially exposing lenders to more lawsuits.

Right because if they made rules setting ethical standards then they might get sued for breaking them. The Fed is already backing down and it's clear Congress isn't about to take up the slack. DWT notices the cozy relationship between the lenders and their would be overseers.

In 2006 the finance, insurance and real estate industries donated a total of $258,824,573 to candidates for office, most of it to Republicans and reactionary Democrats. So far this year-- and we're not even halfway done-- these public-minded industrialists have already given $209,078,445, an amount estimated to reach around $750,000,000 before November. Isn't that special? 54% has gone to Democrats, although much of it to very conservative Democrats who work closely with the GOP to push the agendas of these paymasters.

Go to the post for the complete list, which by the way includes all three presidential candidates with Hillary Clinton leading the pack on deep pocket money. I don't know how it could be any clearer that the only thing that this election is going to change is how we elect the next person who will end up kowtowing to the corporatocracy.



That's not to say that changing the electoral dynamics isn't good, just pointing out that it's probably not going to change the dynamics inside the Beltway very much.



No comments:

Post a Comment