Michael Krieger

My name is Michael Krieger, and I am the creator and editor of Liberty Blitzkrieg. I'm originally from New York City.

As far as my academic and professional background, I attended college at Duke University where I earned a double major in Economics and Spanish. After completing my studies in 2000, I took a job at Lehman Brothers where I worked with the Oil analyst in the Equity Research Department.  In 2005, I joined Sanford C. Bernstein where I served as the Commodities Analyst on the trading floor. About halfway through my time there, I started to branch out and write opinions on bigger picture "macro" topics that no one else at the firm was covering. These opinion pieces were extremely popular throughout the global investment community, and I traveled around providing advice to some of the largest mutual funds, pension funds and hedge funds in the world.

I loved my job, but as time passed I started to educate myself about how the monetary and financial system functions and what I discovered disgusted me. I no longer felt satisfied working within the industry, and I resigned in January 2010.  At that point, I started a family investment office and continued to write macro pieces on economic, social and geopolitical topics. That summer, I drove cross country for six weeks and ultimately decided to leave the crowded streets of Manhattan for the open spaces of Boulder, Colorado, where I currently reside.

In the years that followed, I gradually recognized that my true passion centers upon writing on issues of significant societal importance given the extremely challenging times we live in. This realization culminated with me losing interest in financial markets and eventually launching this website in early 2012.

If you are interested in a more detailed description, replete with colorful anecdotes, of how I ended up making this bizarre professional transition, take the time to watch the video below.

https//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/DcqMN-FXCIE?rel=0

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

Paris Police Held Mass Shooting Training Exercise Hours Before Actual Attack

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Let’s go ahead and mentally store this in the “that’s fucking weird” file.

From Bloomberg:

The world watched in horror as the death toll from the Paris terror attacks steadily climbed. By the time the three-hour rampage ended on Saturday and authorities put the number of those killed at 129, onlookers could only brace for worse news to come. More than 400 people received medical treatment at hospitals in the stricken city; dozens of them were listed in critical condition. 

The second spike in the death toll never came. Just three of those hospitalized with grave injuries have died in the four days since the attacks. 

The world-class status of the French health-care system deserves much of the credit. But a good deal of preparation, experience, and more than a little bit of lucky timing also helped save lives.

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Government is Lying – New Study Shows No Increase in Use of Encryption by Jihadists Since Snowden Revelations

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Speaking less than three days after coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris killed 129 and injured hundreds more, Mr. Brennan complained about “a lot of hand-wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists.”

What he calls “hand-wringing” was the sustained national outrage following the 2013 revelations by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, that the agency was using provisions of the Patriot Act to secretly collect information on millions of Americans’ phone records.

It is hard to believe anything Mr. Brennan says. Last year, he bluntly denied that the C.I.A. had illegally hacked into the computers of Senate staff members conducting an investigation into the agency’s detention and torture programs when, in fact, it did. In 2011, when he was President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, he claimed that American drone strikes had not killed any civilians, despite clear evidence that they had. And his boss, James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has admitted lying to the Senate on the N.S.A.’s bulk collection of data. Even putting this lack of credibility aside, it’s not clear what extra powers Mr. Brennan is seeking.

– From the New York Times editorial board article: Mass Surveillance Isn’t the Answer to Fighting Terrorism 

Let’s get a few things clear right off the bat.

U.S. intelligence agencies have been waiting for a terror attack to do two things. 1) Blame Edward Snowden. 2) Target Encryption.

This is why in the immediate aftermath of the Paris tragedy, we saw the following…

From the post, Meet the Institution Most Intent on Destroying American Freedom – (*Hint: It’s Not ISIS):

CIA Director John Brennan said Monday he suspects the Islamic State is currently working on more terrorist plots against the West following Friday’s attack in Paris that killed at least 129 people and injured hundreds more. He also criticized new privacy protections enacted after Edward Snowden’s disclosures about U.S. government surveillance practices.

In his remarks, Brennan said the attacks should serve as a “wake-up call” for those misrepresenting what intelligence services do to protect innocent civilians. He cited “a number of unauthorized disclosures, and a lot of handwringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists.”

Of course, it wasn’t just Brennan. As noted in yesterday’s post, U.S. Government Moves to Exploit Paris Terror Attacks to Ban Privacy:

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Exposed – The Clinton Foundation is Running a $20 Million Private Equity Firm in Colombia

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The Clinton Foundation is operating a $20 million private equity firm in Colombia, raising concerns from government and consumer watchdog groups who say the practice is unusual and could pose a significant conflict of interest.

The line between the firm and the Clinton’s nonprofit world is hazy. Fondo Acceso is run out of the Clinton Foundation’s Bogota office and staffed by foundation employees, a representative at the office told the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday.

A charitable foundation running a private equity fund is “not something one hears about commonly” and is “very concerning,” according to Craig Holman, the government affairs lobbyist at the watchdog group Public Citizen.

Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group, said the lack of transparency was a troubling. He said the public has a right to know whether any of Fondo Acceso’s companies received U.S. government support while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.

– From The Washington Free Beacon article: Clinton Foundation Running Private Equity Fund in Colombia

The ties between the Clinton Foundation, Canadian billionaire businessman Frank Giustra and the nation of Colombia run deep. This is a topic I explored earlier in the year in the post, This is How Hillary Does Business – An Oil Company, Human Rights Abuses in Colombia and the Clinton Foundation. Here’s an excerpt:

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Liberty Links – 11/18/15

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Below are links to some of the more interesting and important reads I came across today, but will not be publishing on in detail.

This post will be updated with new links throughout the day.

How Pedophilia Gets Covered Up in the U.S. Military (AP)

Merkel Cites Refugees as Boon as Anti-Immigration Party Advances (Bloomberg)

Election 2016: Voters Will Be Angrier, Less Religious, More Diverse (Wall Street Journal)

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Congress Introduces Legislation to Ensure Corporate Criminals Remain Above the Law

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House Republicans on Monday unveiled legislation that would decriminalize a broad swath of corporate malfeasance, a move that injects white-collar crime issues into the thus-far bipartisan agenda on criminal justice reform. 

The House bill would eliminate a host of white-collar crimes where the damaging acts are merely reckless, negligent or grossly negligent. If enacted, it would make it more difficult for federal authorities to pursue executive wrongdoing, from financial fraud to environmental pollution.

Department of Justice spokesman Peter Carr blasted the legislation in a statement provided to HuffPost, saying it “would create confusion and needless litigation, and significantly weaken, often unintentionally, countless federal statutes,” including “those that play an important role in protecting the public welfare … protecting consumers from unsafe food and medicine.”

– From the Huffington Post article: House Bill Would Make It Harder To Prosecute White-Collar Crime

A key key theme here at Liberty Blitzkrieg from inception is that there are two tiers of justice in America. One for the rich and powerful, another for the poor and voiceless. It’s even worse than that though, since not only are certain segments of the population above the law, they are actually rewarded for a lack of ethics and criminality.

There is no more perfect example of this than the banker bailouts, in which the one sector of the economy that created and nurtured the financial collapse was rewarded with trillions of dollars in taxpayer backstops and bailouts. This same finance sector has seen a disproportionate amount of all income gains since the “recovery” started, precisely because the bailout itself was designed to help it as opposed to the middle class.

Of course, it’s not just Wall Street. The elite’s minions must also be taken care of. As such, police are allowed to SWAT raid, shoot to kill and rob average Americans via civil asset forfeiture with impunity. In fact, we just learned that police civil asset forfeitures exceeded all burglaries in 2014. So you are actually more likely to be robbed by a government criminal, versus a street thug in today’s America.

As reported by Armstrong Economics:

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Read the One Paragraph That Explains Why No Bankers Have Gone to Jail

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Earlier this morning, as I was just minding my own business reading what appeared to be an uneventful Wall Street Journal article titled, Justice Department Gets Tougher on Corporate Crime, I came across a stunning revelation.

Before getting into it, I should provide a little background. Back in September, I highlighted a document known as the “Yates memo,” referring to a document written by deputy attorney general Sally Yates which promises to target individuals in cases of corporate wrongdoing. This of course made everyone wonder why the Justice Department wasn’t doing so in the first place. Which brings me to the shocking revelation in yesterday’s WSJ article…

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Liberty Links – 11/17/15

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Below are links to some of the more interesting and important reads I came across today, but will not be publishing on in detail.

This post will be updated throughout the day, so I suggest refreshing from time to time.

Prospects Dim for TPP Passage in 2016 (Reuters)

China Continues to Use Prisoners’ Organs for Transplants (New York Times)

Another Scandal at the Secret Service (Daily Mail)

ISIS Wants to Destroy the ‘Grey Zone’ (MUST READ by Nafeez Ahmed, one of the most knowledge people on ISIS).

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U.S. Government Moves to Exploit Paris Terror Attacks to Ban Privacy

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Last week, the British Prime Minister told Parliament that he wants to “ensure that terrorists do not have a safe space in which to communicate.”

Strong encryption refers to the act of scrambling data in such a way that it cannot be understood by anyone without the correct key or password — even law enforcement with a warrant, or the software manufacturer itself. It’s used in some of the most popular tech products in the world, including the iPhone, WhatsApp messenger, and Facebook.

A highly respected cryptographer and security expert is warning that David Cameron’s proposed ban on strong encryption threatens to “destroy the internet.”

– From the post: Top Computer Security Expert Warns – David Cameron’s Plan to Ban Encryption Would “Destroy the Internet”

You didn’t think the surveillance state would give up that easily did you? Of course not.

Unsurprisingly, fresh off the heels of the Paris terror attacks, the usual authoritarian suspects in the U.S. government are running around exploiting the tragedy in a bid to further erode privacy and civil liberties.

Bloomberg reports:

The bloodshed in Paris led U.S. officials Monday to renew calls for limits on technology that prevents governments from spying on phone conversations, text messages and e-mails.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said she asked Silicon Valley companies to help law enforcement and intelligence agencies access communications that have been encrypted — or scrambled to evade surveillance — if terrorists are using the tools to plan attacks.

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Meet the Institution Most Intent on Destroying American Freedom – (*Hint: It’s Not ISIS)

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In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

– James Madison, Founding Father and 4th President of these United States

No outside force can end freedom in America. The only force that can end freedom in America, is the American government itself. This is the main lesson of the 15 years since 9/11.

The notion that we must preemptively give up our freedoms to protect our freedoms is so remarkably infantile and irrational you’d think almost no one would fall for it. Yet fall for it they do.

On the other hand if you are a serious person and want to examine where the real threat to American freedom and liberty resides, look no further than Washington D.C..

From Foreign Policy:

CIA Director John Brennan said Monday he suspects the Islamic State is currently working on more terrorist plots against the West following Friday’s attack in Paris that killed at least 129 people and injured hundreds more. He also criticized new privacy protections enacted after Edward Snowden’s disclosures about U.S. government surveillance practices.

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Introducing “Liberty Links”

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Over the course of any given day, I come across far more interesting stories and insights from around the world than I could ever consider commenting on here at Liberty Blitzkrieg. Many of these articles are just as impactful as the stuff I’m able to cover, so I’ve decided to share these via a new post that … Read more