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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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Trade is in irons

By Fester


Slowing trade is real as the combination of decreased consumption, increased transportation costs and severe credit availability concerns over the winter has reduced trade and the hope of someone having an export led recovery. Here are three quick notes:


Brad Setser on Chinese-Japanese trade flows:




But there is now real way to put all that positive gloss on Japan�s 41% year over year fall in exports. It is an epic fall.


Japan�s May 2009 exports were even a bit lower than its April 2009 exports. There may be some benign explanation for the slight dip in May, but I don�t think there is any way to suggest that the Japan�s May trade data suggests a robust global recovery.




The Big Picture on US durable goods and capital expenditures which is the stuff that makes stuff that can be exported or substituted for imports:




Non defense capital goods ex aircraft, the pure cap ex component, rose a solid 4.8% but after drops in the two prior months and is still down 23.1% y/o/y...

One caveat, the inventory to shipments ratio rose to 1.90, the highest since �92....





And finally Menzie Chinn doing some econometrics that make my head hurt on a global trade chasm:



The annualized drop in non-oil goods imports was 60.5% in 2009Q1 (log terms), while that of non-agricultural goods exports was 51.5% (both in log terms)...


So right now, there is a massive drop in global trade and very little import substitution going on that requires new capacity. The only good news with this data is that the argument on multiplier effects of stimulus spending should be strengthened as the leakage due to propensity to import is probably lower than the models' assumptions. But yeah, this is the doldrums.




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