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

Meet Janet Cowell – The North Carolina Treasurer Desperately Pushing to Keep Criminal Public Pension Fees Secret

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Screen Shot 2014-06-30 at 11.07.57 AMOne of the most important revelations to emerge in 2014 to-date, is the fact that public pensions are taking on an increasing amount of irresponsible risk in order to meet return targets. The primary way they are doing this is by investing a larger and larger percentage of assets with “alternative investment” managers such as hedge funds and private equity firms.

Specifically, states have increased allocations to alternatives to $460 billion, or 15.3%, from only 3.3 percent in 2001, according to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. What is really shocking, and extraordinarily disturbing, is the fact that the deals these public pensions enter into, and associated fees paid, are intentionally kept secret from the public, and the people’s whose assets are at stake have absolutely no idea how their money is being invested.

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Big Brother is Coming to Healthcare – How Hospitals are Entering Your Credit Card Info Into Algorithms

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Screen Shot 2014-06-28 at 11.23.58 AMThe article below is a great example of the unforeseen dangers of creating gigantic bureaucratic systems into which potentially hundreds of millions of people are forced into involuntarily, i.e., Obamacare.

The moment you create a national system of healthcare is the moment everybody suddenly has this so-called “health responsibility” to everyone else. Which is fascistic and the opposite of freedom. Again, I don’t have an issue with human beings voluntarily organizing into whatever kind of systems they want. This brings me back to this idea that we need to move more toward city-states and decentralization as a means of human organization. If the people of Boulder for example want to have a city-wide healthcare system they devise, great. Let the people decide. If you don’t want to live under that, you can easily move to another city that does it differently. This idea that one healthcare system should be in place for a gigantic, culturally diverse land of 315 million people is childish, inefficient and, for lack of a better word, stupid.

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The Pitchforks are Coming…– A Dire Warning from a Member of the 0.01%

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If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.

From Nick Hanauer’s excellent Politico Op-Ed: The Pitchforks are Coming…For Us Plutocrats

Over the past several years, I have been extremely critical of the 0.01% as a socio-economic class, often referring to them as criminal oligarchs. This has nothing to do with the incredible sums of money they have amassed. I’m simply not interested in chasing that kind of wealth, nor am I an envious person. I don’t care how much money anyone has. What I do care about is the kind of power that such money can buy, and how that power is then abused to purchase politicians and run roughshod over entire societies. I have also been disgusted with the fact that the 0.01% as a class seem self-absorbed, apathetic and delusional when it comes to the catastrophe the current economic and financial system is reaping upon the planet. So busy are they patting themselves on the back and scrambling to acquire that next billion to see what is rapidly unfolding beyond their moats.

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My Tour of the LulzBot 3D-Printer Facility: An Introduction to Open Source Hardware

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Taz4I have been attending the excellent Liberty on the Rocks (LOTR) events in Denver as of late, which take place on the 1st and 3rd weeks of every month. These informal meetings often have guest speakers, and are filled with liberty-minded thinkers and entrepreneurs. If you live in the area, I strongly suggest you attend.

Last week’s speaker really caught my attention. His name is Harris Kenny, and he is the Communications Manager at Aleph Objects, Inc., the company that makes LulzBot 3D printers. I’ve touched on 3D-Printing on several occasions over the years, since it is one of the key emerging technologies which will facilitate humanity’s transition away from centralized, hierarchic and bureaucratic ways of societal organization into decentralized, networked and voluntary systems. Below are a few of those articles:

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Ex-CIA Officer Claims that Open Source Revolution is About to Overthrow Global Oligarchy

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I want to know what’s to stop this revolution from turning into a violent, destructive mess. Steele is characteristically optimistic. “I have struggled with this question. What I see happening is an end to national dictat and the emergence of bottom-up clarity, diversity, integrity, and sustainability. Individual towns across the USA are now nullifying federal and state regulations – for example gag laws on animal cruelty, blanket permissions for fracking. Those such as my colleague Parag Khanna that speak to a new era of city-states are correct in my view. Top down power has failed in a most spectacular manner, and bottom-up consensus power is emergent. ‘Not in my neighborhood’ is beginning to trump ‘Because I say so.’ The one unlimited resource we have on the planet is the human brain – the current strategy of 1% capitalism is failing because it is killing the Golden Goose at multiple levels. Unfortunately, the gap between those with money and power and those who actually know what they are talking about has grown catastrophic. The rich are surrounded by sycophants and pretenders whose continued employment demands that they not question the premises. As Larry Summers lectured Elizabeth Warren, ‘insiders do not criticize insiders.’”

– From the recent incredible Guardian article: The Open Source Revolution is Coming and it Will Conquer the 1% – ex CIA spy

This article that I am highlighting today is the most powerful and optimistic piece I have read in all of 2014. It also follows on perfectly from my post this past weekend, which I strongly suggest reading before continuing titled: Networks vs. Hierarchies: Which Will Win? Niall Furguson Weighs In.

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Are U.S.–Russia Tensions Heating Up? Reuters Reports Russia May Bar Firms from Using Foreign Banks

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Screen Shot 2014-06-24 at 3.54.44 PMDespite the ongoing proxy war between the U.S. and Russia in the Ukraine, as well as financial tensions that have been simmering between the two nations for quite some time, I was still surprised to see the following headline from Reuters: Russia Mulls Barring Firms from Using Foreign-owned Banks.

If this actually happens, it would be a very big deal, and certainly an escalation in the friction between these two geopolitically crucial nations. We learn from Reuters that:

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Officials at the Ex-Im Bank are Under Investigation as it Fights for Survival

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Screen Shot 2014-06-24 at 12.37.37 PMThe Export-Import bank isn’t a big issue for me. In fact, I’ve barely given it much thought at all over the years. The reason I’ve decided to write on it today is because the federally backed bank, which has been around since 1934, faces a very serious threat to its survival.

I think the most important aspect of this entire fight is the fact that on opposite sides of the debate are not Democrats versus Republicans, but once again Republicans vs. Republicans (as in the Dave Brat vs. Eric Cantor race). We again see tea party Republicans facing off against establishment RINOs. On one side we hear claims by the tea party wing that the Ex-Im merely serves as a conduit for crony capitalism and favoritism to large corporations, or those willing to bribe officials. On the other side, we see establishment Republicans, who are extremely cozy with mega-corporations, maintaing that the institution plays a crucial role in financing American exports to make them competitive.

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It’s Official – German Gold is Staying in New York at The Federal Reserve

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*Update: A couple of people have made a stink about this post claiming that it is misleading because the prior agreed upon repatriation schedule has not actually changed. That said, anyone who reads the Bloomberg piece will quickly conclude that the article clearly implies something had changed, which is why I made this assumption. In fact, the source article was so misleading that Peter Boehringer, co-founder of “Repatriate Our Gold,” posted the following in the comment section:

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What Mr. Boehringer makes clear, is that there is nothing “new” in the Bloomberg article. That of course is not to say that the repatriation schedule as it stands is not preposterous. It is, and he agrees with that wholeheartedly. So the reason for this update is clarify this one key misunderstanding. That doesn’t change many of the key points of the post. Those are:

1) The interesting observation that German officials and politicians continue to put so much faith in the Federal Reserve just as “End the Fed” protests spread through the nation.

2) The ridiculous notion that it is in any nation’s interest to liquidate gold for Central Banker created fiat, which can be conjured into existence in infinite amounts, at zero costs in no time.

3) That the politics on the ground of the ruling party seem to be shifting against repatriating the gold (that is clearly Bloomberg News’ take).

With that out of the way, below is the original post, unchanged, because as I said, the main points are still completely relevant:
 

Screen Shot 2014-06-23 at 10.54.04 AMJust last week, I published a post titled, Video of the Day – “End the Fed” Rallies are Exploding Throughout Germany, which subsequently went viral. Interestingly, only a few days later we find out that Germany’s very own criminal political class has decided it will continue to store the nation’s gold in New York rather than bring it back home as had been the intention. It’s quite ironic that just as protests against the fascist Federal Reserve are spreading throughout the land, the political class officially decides to keep Germany’s treasure across the Atlantic, in care of none other than The Fed itself.

To be fair, this merely seems like a way for Angela Merkel and the rest of her German cronies to save face. After all, it was very clear that the Federal Reserve had already told them “no” when they asked for the gold back in the first place. Why else would it take almost a decade to transport the gold from the U.S. to Germany, which was the latest repatriation schedule. We learn from Bloomberg that:

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Networks vs. Hierarchies: Which Will Win? Niall Furguson Weighs In

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Networks are not planned by a single authority; they are the main source of innovation but are relatively fragile. Hierarchies exist primarily because of economies of scale and scope, beginning with the imperative of self-defense. To that end, but for other reasons too, hierarchies seek to exploit the positive externalities of networks. States need networks, for no political hierarchy, no matter how powerful, can plan all the clever things that networks spontaneously generate. But if the hierarchy comes to control the networks so much as to compromise their benign self-organizing capacities, then innovation is bound to wane.

– From Niall Furguson’s recent article Networks and Hierarchies

I’m not always a huge fan of Niall Furguson, but his latest article in The American Interest, simply titled Networks and Hierarchies is worth reading. Readers of Liberty Blitzkrieg will be well aware that I believe the most significant battle of our era is between the forces of Decentralization vs. Centralization. Mr. Furguson takes that battle and looks at it from a historical perspective, describing it as Networks vs. Hierarchies, and posits that indeed much of our collective history has been characterized by the struggle between these two forces. In fact, he starts out the article with the following question:

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Interview with Dr. Dave Janda – June 2014: Ushering in a Decentralized Future

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It’s been a little while since I’ve done an interview, so here’s my first audio update in a while courtesy of the always excellent Dave Janda. I continue to be very optimistic that we are rapidly headed into a revolutionary new world characterized by decentralization, versus the current centralized, incredibly corrupt, and overly bureaucratic status quo. … Read more