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

The Corporate War on the 2nd Amendment – FedEx and UPS Refuse to Ship Defense Distributed Products

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Screen Shot 2015-02-25 at 10.51.20 AMThey’re acting like this is legal when in fact it’s the expression of a political preference. The artifact that they’re shipping is a CNC mill. There’s nothing about it that is specifically related to firearms except the hocus pocus of the marketing.

You should know that I am making a legal product, to allow you to make a rifle, and I’m probably going to have to smuggle it out of my own city, because the large shipping cartels are in league with the administration, and I honestly to this day, don’t know how I’m going to ship it. 

– Cody Wilson, co-founder of Defense Distributed

Longtime readers of Liberty Blitzkrieg will be familiar with Cody Wilson and his company Defense Distributed. Cody is a brilliant, passionate patriot, and a staunch defender of the Republic. As such, he and his endeavors are considered problematic and offensive by the corporate-authoritarian power structure.

It’s extremely important to constantly flex ones civil rights within so-called “free societies” in order to prove to oneself that they still exist. Cody has been at the forefront of doing just that, and the reaction from the status quo can be extremely instructive in demonstrating just how far we have fallen into a failed soft-fascist corporate state.

Before getting into the meat of this article, it’s important offer some background on Defense Distributed and the CNC mill currently in question. Here’s an excerpt from last year’s post, All Supply of the $1,200 Machine for Making Guns Has Sold Out in 36 Hours:

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Video of the Day – Watch as Florida Parents are Treated Like Children for Questioning School Curriculum

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Screen Shot 2015-02-24 at 5.48.00 PMDavid Bolduc, a Liberty Blitzkrieg reader who is a resident of Naples, Florida recently sent me a note highlighting a video in which he, and several other concerned parents, were reprimanded and treated like little children in a School Board Workshop as a result of them expressing concerns about school curriculum.

In order to give you some background on the issue, see the Letter to the Editor he wrote to the Naples Daily News on 1/28 to say what he was prevented from saying at the 1/20 School Board Workshop. Letter reprinted below:

Patton the cause

The controversy behind the recent parents’ review of school textbooks lays squarely at the feet of Superintendent Kamela Patton.

Specifically, Collier County School Board Policy 2240 reads, “Furthermore, the Superintendent shall prepare administrative procedures detailing the manner in which students and parents will be adequately informed, each year, regarding their right to inspect instructional materials, and the procedure for completing such an inspection.”

By failing to prepare procedures to implement Board Policy 2240, Patton created the perception the textbook review was a nighttime Watergate-style break-in masterminded by conservative political operative and School Board member G. Gordon Lichter.

I examined seventh-grade “Civics in Practice” and it contained numerous factual inaccuracies. For example, on Page 100 it states, “The Constitution can be changed in two ways; formally by Amendment, and informally by Government.” This notion of dictatorship is enhanced by eighth-grade textbook “United States History,” which states on Page 185, “The President issues Executive Orders. These commands have the power of law.”

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The Police States of America – Elderly New Jersey Man Faces 10 Years in Jail for Possession of 18th Century Pistol

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Screen Shot 2015-02-23 at 5.53.46 PMYou just can’t make this stuff up. You really can’t. Another day, another elderly American peasant pursued by a “justice” system in which real crooks receive taxpayer bailouts to pay themselves bonuses, while perfectly normal citizen behavior is criminalized.

The victim this time is a 72-year-old New Jersey man named Gordon Van Gilder, a retired school teacher, who faces 10 years in jail for possessing a unloaded antique 225-year-old flintlock pistol.

Read it and weep serfs. From Reason:

Gordon Van Gilder is a retired New Jersey school teacher and collector of 18th century memorabilia. That innocuous hobby could land the 72-year-old behind bars for the rest of his life.

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Big Barbie is Watching You – Meet the WiFi Connected Barbie Doll that Talks to Your Children and Records Them

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Screen Shot 2015-02-23 at 2.04.22 PMEarlier this month, I highlighted the fact that the latest Samsung Smart TV can and will listen to your conversations, and will share the details with a third party in the post: A Very Slippery Slope – Yes, Your Samsung Smart TV Can Listen to Your Private Conversations.

Well a couple of weeks later, and we learn that Mattel’s latest high-tech Barbie doll will bring the “internet of things” right into your child’s playpen. From the The Register:

Toymaker Mattel has unveiled a high-tech Barbie that will listen to your child, record its words, send them over the internet for processing, and talk back to your kid. It will email you, as a parent, highlights of your youngster’s conversations with the toy.

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The Forgotten War – Understanding the Incredible Debacle Left Behind by NATO in Libya

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In retrospect, Obama’s intervention in Libya was an abject failure, judged even by its own standards. Libya has not only failed to evolve into a democracy; it has devolved into a failed state. Violent deaths and other human rights abuses have increased severalfold. Rather than helping the United States combat terrorism, as Qaddafi did during his last decade in power, Libya now serves as a safe haven for militias affiliated with both al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The Libya intervention has harmed other U.S. interests as well: undermining nuclear nonproliferation, chilling Russian cooperation at the UN, and fueling Syria’s civil war.


As bad as Libya’s human rights situation was under Qaddafi, it has gotten worse since NATO ousted him. Immediately after taking power, the rebels perpetrated scores of reprisal killings, in addition to torturing, beating, and arbitrarily detaining thousands of suspected Qaddafi supporters. The rebels also expelled 30,000 mostly black residents from the town of Tawergha and burned or looted their homes and shops, on the grounds that some of them supposedly had been mercenaries. Six months after the war, Human Rights Watch declared that the abuses “appear to be so widespread and systematic that they may amount to crimes against humanity.”


As a consequence of such pervasive violence, the UN estimates that roughly 400,000 Libyans have fled their homes, a quarter of whom have left the country altogether. 


– From Alan Kuperman’s excellent Foreign Affairs article: Obama’s Libya Debacle

Regular readers will be somewhat familiar with the total chaos NATO left behind in the wake of its so-called “humanitarian” intervention in Libya, but I doubt many of you are aware of just how enormous the disaster actually has become.

Alan J. Kuperman, an Associate Professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote an incredible article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, which is an absolute must read. If the American public and politicians actually wanted to learn from their mistakes and avoid making them in the future, this piece could serve as a comprehensive warning about what not to do.

That said, after reading this article the unfortunate truth becomes apparent; that there are only two logical conclusions that can be reached about American foreign policy leadership in the 21st century.

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Another U.S. Veteran Passionately Pleads – “Please Don’t Thank Me for My Service”

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Screen Shot 2015-02-23 at 10.33.29 AMIt wasn’t true. There was a problem. I could see it from the way he looked down. And I could see it on the faces of some of the other vets who work with Mr. Garth when I thanked them too. What gives, I asked? Who doesn’t want to be thanked for their military service?

Many people, it turns out. Mike Freedman, a Green Beret, calls it the “thank you for your service phenomenon.” To some recent vets — by no stretch all of them — the thanks comes across as shallow, disconnected, a reflexive offering from people who, while meaning well, have no clue what soldiers did over there or what motivated them to go, and who would never have gone themselves nor sent their own sons and daughters.

Mr. Garth, 26, said that when he gets thanked it can feel self-serving for the thankers, suggesting that he did it for them, and that they somehow understand the sacrifice, night terrors, feelings of loss and bewilderment. Or don’t think about it at all.

– From the New York Times article: Please Don’t Thank Me for My Service 

Last fall, Liberty Blitzkrieg highlighted a powerful letter written by former U.S. Army Ranger Rory Fanning, in the post: “Stop Thanking Me for My Service” – Former U.S. Army Ranger Blasts American Foreign Policy and The Corporate State. In it, I explained why his comments resonated so powerfully with me. Here’s an excerpt:

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Hillary Clinton Exposed Part 1 – How She Aggressively Lobbied for Mega Corporations as Secretary of State

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That approach, which Mrs. Clinton called “economic statecraft,” emerged in discussions with Robert Hormats, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. investment banker who has worked in Democratic and Republican administrations and became an undersecretary of state. “One of the very first items was, how do we strengthen the role of the State Department in economic policy?” he says.

Early in Mrs. Clinton’s tenure, according to Mr. Hormats, Microsoft’s then Chief Research Officer Craig Mundie asked the State Department to send a ranking official to a fourth annual meeting of U.S. software executives and Chinese government officials about piracy and Internet freedom. Mr. Hormats joined the December 2009 meeting in Beijing.

Mr. Hormats says there was no relation between Microsoft’s donations and the State Department’s participation in the China conference.

Before every overseas trip, says Mr. Hormats, the former undersecretary of state, he helped prepare a list of U.S. corporate interests for Mrs. Clinton to advocate while abroad. 

– From the Wall Street Journal article: Hillary Clinton’s Complex Corporate Ties

If you can’t beat em, mock em. That’s essentially my motto going into the imperial spectacle known as the 2016 American Presidential election. With another Bush and another Clinton likely on the ballot, there’s basically only one candidate running, and I plan on proving this in no uncertain terms over the next couple of years.

Recently, I started a series known as “Jeb Bush Exposed” (read part 1 and part 2), so it’s only fair that I create a similar category for Hillary. Going forward, I plan on naming all future exposes on these two cronies in that manner, so all the stories are easily accessible as we head into next year’s charade.

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The “War on Terror” Turns Inward – DHS Report Warns of Right Wing Terror Threat

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Screen Shot 2015-02-20 at 11.38.07 AMWhat you are about to read from CNN is just the very beginning of the intentional demonization of a growing segment of the U.S. population that rightly believes the government is run by a collective of thieving, corrupt, immoral sociopaths. This isn’t speculation either, years of content on this site serves as definitive proof that this is true. Commingling dissent, violence and “right wing” ideology will be key in the ultimate division of government critics in these United States, and a successful attempt to scare people away from questioning a clearly degraded and parasitic status quo.

The writing has been on the wall for many years, and I’ve warned about this development on many occasions (links at the end). If Martin Armstrong’s model is correct, and the U.S. economy starts to move downward in fall 2015, dissent will spread across the land like brushfire and the status quo will call dissenters terrorists (they already did this during Occupy Wall Street). My advice to everyone listening is don’t fall for it, and instead unite together in order to achieve a peaceful societal and economic paradigm shift.

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Jeb Bush Exposed Part 2 – He Thinks Unconstitutional NSA Spying is “Hugely Important”

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Screen Shot 2015-02-19 at 3.49.11 PMIn some ways I’m actually looking forward to the imperial spectacle that will be the Jeb Bush vs. Hilary Clinton Presidential contest in 2016. Just like an alcoholic or drug addict is often unable to shake the cycle of addiction until hitting rock bottom, so too it seems the American peasantry must hit political rock bottom before becoming fed up enough to do something about it; and I can’t imagine a more odious, absurd scenario than being forced to chose between another Bush and another Clinton.

I’ve given Hilary a lot of grief here at Liberty Blitzkrieg, primarily because she’s an oligarch coddling embarrassment (links at the end). Jeb Bush hasn’t received the same treatment as of yet, but I’m going to do my best to make up for lost time.

Just yesterday, I highlighted his unsurprising neocon foreign policy chops in the piece, Jeb Bush Exposed Part 1 – His Top Advisors Will Be the Architects of His Brother’s Iraq War. Specifically, we learned that:

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A Libertarian-Liberal Alliance Forms to Tackle Criminal Justice Reform

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Usually bitter adversaries, Koch Industries and the Center for American Progress have found at least one thing they can agree on: The nation’s criminal justice system is broken.

Koch Industries, the conglomerate owned by the conservative Koch brothers, and the center, a Washington-based liberal issues group, are coming together to back a new organization called the Coalition for Public Safety. The coalition plans a multimillion-dollar campaign on behalf of emerging proposals to reduce prison populations, overhaul sentencing, reduce recidivism and take on similar initiatives. Other groups from both the left and right — the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Tax Reform, the Tea Party-oriented FreedomWorks — are also part of the coalition, reflecting its unusually bipartisan approach.

— From the New York Times article: Unlikely Cause Unites the Left and the Right: Justice Reform

While I’d love to fill the pages of Liberty Blitzkrieg with positive news about how things are turning around for the better within American society, there is unfortunately little evidence that this is indeed the case. However, every now and again I do see a positive development worth pointing out. The following article from the New York Times about the recent creation of the Coalition for Public Safety, uniting the Koch brothers and the Washington D.C. based liberal Center for American Progress on the issue of reforming the nation’s criminal justice system, is one such example.

The idea that genuine libertarian types and genuine progressive types have a lot of important issues in common is a concept I have pushed for years. The following venn diagram someone created at the time of the Occupy Wall Street protests demonstrated this overlap perfectly:

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