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

Anti-American Sentiment Runs High in Russia After Retired U.S. General Suggested “Start Killing Russians”…

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“The only way the United States can have any effect in this region and turn the tide,” Mr. Scales said, “is to start killing Russians … killing so many Russians that even Putin’s media can’t hide the fact that Russians are returning to the motherland in body bags. But, given the [small] amount of support we’ve given to the Ukrainians, given the ability of the Ukrainians themselves to counter-attack against these, what? 12,000 Russians camped in their country…sadly that’s not likely to happen.”

– Retired U.S. Major General Robert H. Scales

Earlier this year, I outlined my take on modern American foreign policy in the post, The Forgotten War – Understanding the Incredible Debacle Left Behind by NATO in Libya. This was my conclusion:

There are only two logical conclusions that can be reached about American foreign policy leadership in the 21st century.

1) American leadership is ruthlessly pursuing immoral wars all over the world with the intent of creating outside enemies to focus public anger on, as a conscious diversion away from the criminality happening domestically. As an added bonus, the intelligence-military-industrial complex makes an incredible sum of money. The end result: serfs are distracted with inane nationalistic fervor, while the “elites” earn billions.

2) American leadership is completely and totally inept; being easily manipulated into overseas conflicts by ruthless corporate interests and cunning foreign “rebels” in order to advance their own selfish interests, which are in conflict with the interests of the general public.

I can’t come up with any other logical conclusion. Either way, such people have no business running the affairs of these United States, and their actions are merely increasing instability and violence across the planet. The longer they remain in charge with no accountability, the more dangerous this world will become.

Just a month later, retired U.S. Major General Robert H. Scales was interviewed on Fox Business with Lou Dobbs, and he suggested killing so many Russians that Putin would lose his power base back home. I really wish I was making it up, but watch it here for yourself:

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New UN Privacy Chief Proclaims – UK Digital Surveillance is “Worse than Orwell”

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Cannataci says we are dealing with a world even worse that anything Orwell could have foreseen. “It’s worse,” he said. “Because if you look at CCTV alone, at least Winston was able to go out in the countryside and go under a tree and expect there wouldn’t be any screen, as it was called. Whereas today there are many parts of the English countryside where there are more cameras than George Orwell could ever have imagined. So the situation in some cases is far worse already.

– UN Privacy chief, Joseph Cannataci

The UN special rapporteur on privacy, Joseph Cannataci, pulls no punches when it comes to privacy. It’s hard to disagree with what he has to say.

From the Guardian:

The first UN privacy chief has said the world needs a Geneva convention style law for the internet to safeguard data and combat the threat of massive clandestine digital surveillance.

Speaking to the Guardian weeks after his appointment as the UN special rapporteur on privacy, Joseph Cannataci described British surveillance oversight as being “a joke”, and said the situation is worse than anything George Orwell could have foreseen.

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Denver Police Arrest “Jury Nullification” Activist for Passing Out Informational Pamphlets

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Most of you will be familiar with the concept of jury nullification. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans are not. This is precisely why Mark Iannicelli set up a “Jury Info” booth outside the Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse in Denver. In a nutshell, jury nullification is the idea that jurors can “can ignore the law and follow their conscience when they believe the law would dictate a miscarriage of justice.” In other words, jurors have the right to judge the law as well as the facts. As you will see in the video at the end, this concept has centuries of precedence in these United States behind it.

When you recognize the vast power that such a concept holds, you recognize why it would be so hated by statists and authoritarians across the land. That is precisely why Mr. Iannicelli was arrested and charged with handing out information.

For a little background, read the following from the Denver Post:

Denver prosecutors have charged a man with seven counts of jury tampering after they say he tried to influence jurors by passing out literature on jury nullification on Monday.

Mark Iannicelli, 56, set up a small booth with a sign that said “Juror Info” in front of the city’s Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse courthouse, prosecutors say. 

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Did the Bank of England Admit Financial Markets Aren’t “Real”?

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On a day witnessing such tremendous financial market volatility, this seems like the perfect story. The Bank of England has announced an “Open Forum” to be held on November 11, with the title: Building Real Markets for the Good of the People. No, I’m not making this up.

Here’s a screenshot from the BOE website:

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We have to “build real markets?”

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Video of the Day (Humor) – Footage Unveiled of Hillary’s Email Scrubbing Strategy

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I’ve posted a lot of “dismal’ stuff today, but since it’s better to laugh than to cry, I give you the following.

I don’t know what’s more horrifying, Hillary’s blatant disregard for the law, or the thought of her doing yoga.

Thanks for playin’

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*Image courtesy of William Banzai7

For related articles, see:

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JP Morgan Hires Recently Retired U.S. General, Raymond T. Odierno

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How can you ensure that the interests of TBTF Wall Street mega banks and the military-intelligence-industrial complex remain aligned? Create a revolving door of course.

This is a trend I’ve been following over the past several years. Below are a couple of notable examples:

Video of the Day – General Wesley Clark Suggests Putting “Disloyal Americans” in Internment Camps

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David Petraeus – How This Leaker of Classified Information is Peddling KKR Funds as Opposed to Serving Jail Time

Now for the latest. From the Wall Street Journal:

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Introducing the Gigantic and Dangerous Wall Street Loophole You’ve Never Heard of

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This spring, traders and analysts working deep in the global swaps markets began picking up peculiar readings: Hundreds of billions of dollars of trades by U.S. banks had seemingly vanished.

The vanishing of the trades was little noted outside a circle of specialists. But the implications were big. The missing transactions reflected an effort by some of the largest U.S. banks — including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley — to get around new regulations on derivatives enacted in the wake of the financial crisis, say current and former financial regulators.

The trades hadn’t really disappeared. Instead, the major banks had tweaked a few key words in swaps contracts and shifted some other  trades to affiliates in London, where regulations are far more lenient. Those affiliates remain largely outside the jurisdiction of U.S. regulators, thanks to a loophole in swaps rules that banks successfully won from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2013.

Many of the CFTC employees who were lobbied in these meetings went on to work for banks. Between 2010 and 2013, there were 50 CFTC staffers who met with the top five U.S. banks 10 or more times. Of those 50 staffers, at least 25 now work for the big five or other top swaps-dealing banks, or for law firms and lobbyists representing these banks.

The lobbying blitz helped win a ruling from the CFTC that left U.S. banks’ overseas operations largely outside the jurisdiction of U.S. regulators. After that rule passed, U.S. banks simply shipped more trades overseas. By December of 2014, certain U.S. swaps markets had seen 95 percent of their trading volume disappear in less than two years.

– From the excellent Reuters article: U.S. Banks Moved Billions of Dollars in Trades Beyond Washington’s Reach

The following story is guaranteed to make you sick. Once again, we’re shown that following trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts and backstops, TBTF Wall Street banks immediately went ahead and focused all their attention obtaining loopholes in order to transfer risk and make billions upon billions of dollars in the financial matrix, as opposed to adding any benefit whatsoever to society.

From Reuters:

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Welcome to “Dismaland” – Banksy’s Latest Exhibit Opens in England

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Welcome to Dismaland: A far better representation of life for the world’s masses, frustratingly toiling under an endlessly corrupt, neo-feudal, criminal oligarchy.

But don’t take it from me. Here’s a look at some photos from the latest Banksy exhibit, which opened Thursday in Western-super-Mare, Somerset, England.

The Denver Post reports:

The elusive British graffiti artist Banksy has unveiled his latest project — a parody of a seaside theme park called “Dismaland” complete with a derelict castle, a dead Cinderella and a Grim Reaper in a bumper car. The artist, best known for his subversive, stenciled street art, said it was a “festival of art, amusements and entry-level anarchism.” “I guess you’d say it’s a theme park whose big theme is theme parks should have bigger themes,” he said.

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Parts of California Have Sunk Over a Foot in Eight Months Due to Drought

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California Dreamin’ this is not.

Sounds pretty freakin’ terrifying actually. From Bloomberg:

Land in California’s central valley agricultural region sank more than a foot in just eight months in some places as residents and farmers pump more and more groundwater amid a record drought.

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