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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Monday, November 7, 2011

Life may be grand, but we'll play the victim anyway

By BJ Bjornson

Via Kevin Drum, an article in the Washington Post telling us just how well the banksters are doing after crashing the economy for the 99% with their gambling.


The largest banks are larger than they were when Obama took office and are nearing the level of profits they were making before the depths of the financial crisis in 2008, according to government data.

Wall Street firms � independent companies and the securities-trading arms of banks � are doing even better. They earned more in the first 21 / 2 years of the Obama administration than they did during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, industry data show.

Behind this turnaround, in significant measure, are government policies that helped the financial sector avert collapse and then gave financial firms huge benefits on the path to recovery. For example, the federal government invested hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in banks � low-cost money that the firms used for high-yielding investments on which they made big profits.


I�m sure that none of this comes as a shock to anyone paying attention, but what strikes me most about the story is the opening point regarding how the financial industries executives are consistently criticizing Obama and his administration for excessive regulations and other �anti-business� moves that are hurting them.

I suppose it shouldn�t surprise me that the banksters attitudes match those of the �license to bully� supporters in Michigan. It�s the very same pattern of crying victimhood by the powerful to attack any measure that might actually protect their victims and if possible twist such measures into something that further entrenches their privileged place at the top of the pyramid.

Little wonder they�ve become such natural allies.


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