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, April 9, 2012

Standing On The Edge

By Steve Hynd


I've a post up at The Agonist today wondering if the time has finally come for the West and Iran to either do a deal or go to war. Trita Parsi says it has and I'm inclined to agree.


But if the first order consequences of attacking Iran have been well covered by many, second order and further consequences ar harder by their very nature to predict and have not been well explored in the media. Previous wars in the region have shown that events which interrupted between 4 and 7% of the world's oil supply caused price spikes of between 25 and 70%. Iran accounts for 5% of the world's supply and all the oil flowing through the Hormuz Straits comes to 20% of that supply. At some point, if oil hits a sustained price of over $110 a barrel and before $150 a barrel, the global economy begins to break down. At over $150 a barrel for a long period, we can expect a worldwide economic crash. The current price of oil is around $100 a barrel. The math is easy. here.


I'm torn between coming across as too alarmist and calling the potential oncoming disaster what it is. We don't need Mutually Assured Destruction between Cold war superpowers to cause the downfall of modern civilization any longer. If the world pitches into a massive economic crash right now - with the debt-ridden nations of Southern Europe leading the way - it won't recover in time before global warming and peak cheap oil really begin to bite, causing their own massive economic impact. It may not be an exaggeration to say these talks constitute a threshold.



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