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

U.S. Treasury Department Guarantees Debt Issued by the Jordanian Government

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In a bizarre announcement yesterday, the U.S. Treasury Department boasted that the government of Jordan had closed on a $1.25 issuance of sovereign debt guaranteed by the U.S. government. While I am not sure how common it is for our nation to guarantee these types of issuances (comments would be appreciated), the announcement represents a … Read more

Top U.S. Hospitals are Opting Out of Obamacare

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In the off chance you are actually able to access the website and successfully sign up for the epic disaster that is Obamacare, you might be a bit surprised about your options when you actually encounter a medical issue. Every American that is even considering signing up for this nightmare needs to be aware of the disturbing fact that many of the top hospitals in the nation will not be accepting Obamacare related insurance plans. Even worse, in many cases it is virtually impossible to find out which doctors and hospitals are on your plan.

One of the most egregious examples of failure is the following:

Seattle Children’s Hospital ranks No. 11 on the U.S. News & World Report best pediatric hospital list. When Obamacare rolled out, the hospital found itself with just two out of seven insurance companies on Washington’s exchange.

Seattle Children’s is the only pediatric hospital in King County, and offers keys services, such as cancer care, which are not available anywhere else in the region. So if you sign up for Obamacare, good luck surviving. Fortunately, that represents only about six people at the moment.

More from U.S. News:

Americans who sign up for Obamacare will be getting a big surprise if they expect to access premium health care that may have been previously covered under their personal policies. Most of the top hospitals will accept insurance from just one or two companies operating under Obamacare.

Watchdog.org looked at the top 18 hospitals nationwide as ranked by U.S. News and World Report for 2013-2014. We contacted each hospital to determine their contracts and talked to several insurance companies, as well.

The result of our investigation: Many top hospitals are simply opting out of Obamacare.

Chances are the individual plan you purchased outside Obamacare would allow you to go to these facilities. For example, fourth-ranked Cleveland Clinic accepts dozens of insurance plans if you buy one on your own. But go through Obamacare and you have just one choice: Medical Mutual of Ohio.

Consumers, too, will struggle with the new system. Many exchanges don’t even list the insurance companies on their web sites. Some that do, like California, don’t provide names of doctors or hospitals.

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Five Years Ago Today Bitcoin was Born – Read Satoshi’s Original White Paper

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As all of my readers know, I am a huge supporter of Bitcoin for many reasons. What you may not know, is that five years ago today a still unknown individual(s) known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto released a white paper titled: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. The paper announced the Bitcoin concept to the world, and described how the network would deal with the wide variety of problems that might be encountered within the context of such an ambitious project.

Here is a screen shot of the original email:

Screen Shot 2013-10-31 at 3.33.45 PM

I just read through the entirety of the white paper and it is quite fascinating to observe the creator(s) thought process. Below are some of the excerpts I found most intriguing:

Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments…While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model.

What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.

The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes.

If a majority of CPU power is controlled by honest nodes, the honest chain will grow the fastest and outpace any competing chains. To modify a past block, an attacker would have to redo the proof-of-work of the block and all blocks after it and then catch up with and surpass the work of the honest nodes. We will show later that the probability of a slower attacker catching up diminishes exponentially as subsequent blocks are added.

On Incentives…

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Document Reveals Official NSA Talking Points: Use 9/11 Attacks as a “Sound Bite”

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Al Jazeera America has some great work in obtaining the official NSA talking points via a Freedom of Information Act request. As might be expected, the agency tells its people to use the attacks on September 11, 2001 to manipulate public opinion into accepting unacceptable levels of surveillance. As I have maintained over and over again for years, our overreaction to 9/11 has done exponentially more damage to the nation than any terrorist attack ever could. I penned my latest thoughts on the attacks last month in my piece: How I Remember September 11, 2001.

One of the highlights, actually lowlights, of the document is what the NSA refers to as a “soundbite that resonates.” Here it is:

I much prefer to be here today explaining these programs, than explaining another 9/11 event that we were not able to prevent.

More from Al Jazeera America:

The National Security Agency advised its officials to cite the 9/11 attacks as justification for its mass surveillance activities, according to a master list of NSA talking points.

The document, obtained by Al Jazeera through a Freedom of Information Act request, contains talking points and suggested statements for NSA officials (PDF) responding to the fallout from media revelations that originated with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

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Gold Supplies in India Disappear Despite Continued Record Premiums

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I first reported on record high gold premiums in India a couple of weeks ago. Since then, the story has become even more interesting as Reuters reports that gold supplies have completely dried up just ahead of major gold buying festivals and despite continued record premiums. While it is clear that Indians are finding a way … Read more

The Obama Administration is Forcing Insurance Companies to Keep Quiet About ObamaCare Problems

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Just when you think the Obama Administration can’t stoop any lower they immediately come in and surprise you. In this incredible clip from CNN, we learn that insurance company executives are being threatened with retribution if they publicly criticize the rollout of ObamaCare, or inform the public about some of the most pressing issues with the … Read more

Citigroup Written Legislation Moves Through the House of Representatives

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Five years after the Wall Street coup of 2008, it appears the U.S. House of Representatives is as bought and paid for as ever. We heard about the Citigroup crafted legislation currently being pushed through Congress back in May when Mother Jones reported on it. Fortunately, they included the following image in their article:

citigroup-side-by-side

Unsurprisingly, the main backer of the bill is notorious Wall Street lackey Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a former Goldman Sachs employee who has discovered lobbyist payoffs can be just as lucrative as a career in financial services. The last time Mr. Himes made an appearance on these pages was in March 2013 in my piece: Congress Moves to DEREGULATE Wall Street.

More from the New York Times:

The House is scheduled to vote on two bills this week that would undercut new financial regulations and hand Wall Street a victory. The legislation has garnered broad bipartisan support in the House, even after lawmakers learned that Citigroup lobbyists helped write one of the bills, which would exempt a wide array of derivatives trading from new regulation.

Remember what George Carlin observed:

“Bipartisan usually means some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.”

The bills are part of a broader campaign in the House, among Republicans and business-friendly Democrats, to roll back elements of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the most comprehensive regulatory overhaul since the Depression. Of 10 recent bills that alter Dodd-Frank or other financial regulation, six have passed the House this year. This week, if the House approves Citigroup’s legislation and another bill that would delay heightened standards for firms that offer investment advice to retirees, the tally would rise to eight.

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Picture of the Day: This is How I Would Decorate the U.S. Tombstone

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Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. – The Bhagavad Gita This is all we would need to put on the tombstone for the USA. No words, no tears, no flowers. Just a picture of George W. Bush putting the Medal of Freedom around the neck of the most destructive American in our nation’s … Read more

Obama asks Eric Schmidt if “Bitcoin is Anything He Has to Worry About”

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Here’s a story recently related to me by a guest at a White House dinner, which included Google’s Eric Schmidt: The president, whose most important job is surely to protect the integrity of the monetary system, smugly asked Schmidt if Bitcoin, one of many growing challenges to currency hegemony, was anything he had to worry about.

– From a USA Today article titled: How CEOs are Clueless About Technology

If the above is accurate (and I have no reason to suspect it isn’t), it is priceless information on so many levels. First of all, rather than ask about Bitcoin in an inquisitive manner free of prejudice as a enlightened leader surely would, Obama is merely primatively wondering if he needs to “worry about it.”

Actually Barry, if you had any sense and foresight whatsoever you would be looking at it as a great opportunity. An opportunity for the nation to lead the way in growing the Bitcoin economy and shed the archaic, feudalistic monetary system we are currently enslaved under. However, since you work directly for the oligarch money manipulators themselevs, you are clearly and disastrously unable to see things in a more productive and beneficial way.

Second, as I highlighted earlier this year, Eric Schmidt had no clue what Bitcoin was when Julian Assange first mentioned it to him in a lengthy interview in 2011. The initial exchange went as follows:

Assange: On the publishing end, the magnet links and so on are starting to come up. There’s also a very nice little paper that I’ve seen in relation to Bitcoin, that… you know about Bitcoin?

Schmidt: No.

Assange: Okay, Bitcoin is something that evolved out of the cypherpunks a couple of years ago, and it is an alternative… it is a stateless currency.

So Obama is asking Schmidt for his advice about Bitcoin, when Schmidt had no idea what it was two years after it had been created and released into the wild. One bureaucratic control-freak asking another for advice. What could possibly go wrong?

More from the USA Today article:

The president surely believes his important expertise is in matters of policy, law and political machinations. But he is, too, the chief executive of the U.S. government, with its increasing dependence on digital performance. And, in that area, he seems a near-illiterate, or at least a big boob.

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Big Brother is Coming to Your Car

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This is a topic that has been on my radar screen for a while, but one that very few Americans seem to be paying attention to despite the egregious revelations concerning NSA spying that have emerged recently. I first flagged this issue in late 2012 in an article titled: Coming to Your Car: Mandatory Black Boxes That Record Everything.

The latest push for tracking devices in cars is being sold as necessary in order to raise funds to pay for the nation’s decayed highway infrastructure. For example:

 As America’s road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car.

This is simply idiotic. There is already a tax per gallon on gasoline, so people are already being taxed based on how much they drive. Only a control-freak, moronic government bureaucrat would come to the conclusion that the solution to this problem is to install Orwellian tracking devices in people’s cars.

More from the LA Times:

WASHINGTON — As America’s road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car.

The devices, which track every mile a motorist drives and transmit that information to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system for funding America’s major roads.

Are people really so dumb they will agree to this? Probably.

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