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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Saturday, January 14, 2012

Conservatives (Neo Liberals) as Teenagers

Commentary By Ron Beasley


Krugman reports that neo liberal technocrat Frau Merkel gave her response to the S&P downgrades in Europe.


German chancellor Angela Merkel has called on eurozone governments speedily to implement tough new fiscal rules after Standard & Poor�s downgraded the credit ratings of France and Austria and seven other second-tier sovereigns.

More austerity - exactly a reason S&P gave for the downgrade.



We also believe that the agreement [the latest euro rescue plan] is predicated on only a partial recognition of the source of the crisis: that the current financial turmoil stems primarily from fiscal profligacy at the periphery of the eurozone. In our view, however, the financial problems facing the eurozone are as much a consequence of rising external imbalances and divergences in competitiveness between the EMU�s core and the so-called �periphery�. As such, we believe that a reform process based on a pillar of fiscal austerity alone risks becoming self-defeating, as domestic demand falls in line with consumers� rising concerns about job security and disposable incomes, eroding national tax revenues.



Yes, she ignored what S&P said in their report.


Of course this is the same reaction we are seeing from Republicans in the US - economy killing spending cuts along with tax cuts.  Is the debt a problem?  Yes!  Can you solve that problem by killing the economy and reducing tax revenue? No!  Clueless plutocrats and technocrats on both sides of the pond.



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