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.


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Friday, June 13, 2008

The ATM is empty

By Fester:



Calculated Risk is passing along some more bad news from the Kennedy-Greenspan research team. The housing ATM is closed as there is no more cash in the machine and the maintenance tech is several years away from his visit.

For Q1 2008, Dr. Kennedy has calculated Net Equity Extraction as $51.2 billion, or 1.9% of Disposable Personal Income (DPI). Note that net equity extraction for Q4 2007 has been revised upwards to $92.3 billion....MEW declined sharply in Q1 2008, however these numbers are not seasonally adjusted. MEW in Q1 2007 was $135.7 Billion, so MEW has fallen over 60% from Q1 2007.

The combination of falling home prices and the accelerating drop in owner's equity which is the collateral that MEW is borrowed against, higher credit standards (pulse is now required) and increasing uncertainty about future income streams, is severely cramping the ability of Americans to access what is for most Americans their largest single capital asset; their home equity. Some of that equity has disappeared, and some of it went from being liquid to present but very illiquid.



This matters because it is a cushion and a reserve that is no longer available for more people.  People get into serious fiscal trouble when they are hit with both a cash flow problem (more cash needs to go out than is coming in) and asset availability problems.  If someone has liquid assets, a short term cash crunch can be dealt with drawing upon assets and vice versa.  If the assets are not there, previously manageable shocks such as a reduction in hours worked, unemployment or unexpected and serious bills become unmanageable.   



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  1. RAMJune 13, 2008 at 5:23 AM

    To me, the elephant in the room concerning the financial mess is the federal deficit, but no one seems to be mentioning it. Sure, the crash of the mortgage industry and the resulting crash of the real estate industry; skyrocketing fuel prices; and inflation in food prices are causing lots of problems. But it seems to me the federal government�s enormous deficits are soaking up capital like one of those super sponges they advertise on late night TV. And that means the government has to print more money, which is worth less at the same time energy and other prices are being forced upwards by other factors. Frankly, this reminds me of the �70s, when the bill for the guns and butter days of the 1960s came due and we had banana republic-like inflation and interest rates pushing 20 percent. So far, though, I haven�t seen many economists talking about the Bush deficits as having much impact on the current, growing economic crisis.

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