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

Video of the Day: The iPhone 5NsA

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Nothing like rolling out a smartphone with biometric screening a couple of months after massive NSA leaks made everyone paranoid about government surveillance and the corporate partners that help make it possible. In case you are in the need for a little laugh at one of the most poorly timed product launches in history, here … Read more

Texas High School Rewrites the Second Amendment in its History Books

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This is straight up ridiculous. The Daily Paul has brought to my attention that Guyer High School in Denton, Texas is currently using a textbook that describes the 2nd Amendment as such:

Screen Shot 2013-09-17 at 4.58.13 PM

Now this is what the 2nd Amendment actually says:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The Daily Paul correctly points out:

Did you catch the sleight of hand?

A militia is a body of citizens enrolled for military service, and called out periodically for drill but serving full time only in emergencies. It’s a common man army of citizens, NOT soldiers. The citizens are called up in emergencies to protect the free State.

The 2nd Amendment says that a militia is necessary to protect a free State, so in order to be able to have a militia, the citizens have a natural right to keep and bear arms and the government cannot infringe on that right.

The textbook version implies that we’re only allowed to keep and bear arms if we’re in a State militia, a clear misrepresentation of the 2nd Amendment.

Anyone that has actually read the Bill of Rights, understands that they are very brief in text. There is absolutely no reason to ever abbreviate any of these Amendments considering how crucial they are to our civil liberties.

To demonstrate just how brief they are, I have listed them below:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

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Obama Waives Ban on Arming Terrorists to Aid Syrian Rebels

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When I first highlighted the fact that the rebels in Syria had large al-Qaeda elements to it back in December of last year, most people thought it was too incredible to believe. Fast forward to today, and not only is this admitted fact, but we have only solidified our alliance with the rebels over the past nine months. We are now allied with forces that are our purported number one enemy, the threat of which has been used to justify the destruction of civil liberties in this country. Mind-boggling.

Our corrupt, crony leaders are now in such a desperate panic to establish regime change in Syria that we are waiving bans on arming terrorist groups, so that we can arm terrorist groups. The Washington Examiner reports that:

President Obama waived a provision of federal law designed to prevent the supply of arms to terrorist groups to clear the way for the U.S. to provide military assistance to “vetted” opposition groups fighting Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

The president, citing his authority under the Arms Export Control Act, announced today that he would “waive the prohibitions in sections 40 and 40A of the AECA related to such a transaction.”

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Land of the Free: American Police Make an Arrest Every 2 Seconds in 2012

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The FBI has just released its Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) data for 2012, which complies arrest data for the whole of the USA. While the numbers have not changed much from the year before, the absolute numbers are stunning and I doubt most Americans are aware of how elevated and skewed they actually are. The most … Read more

Watch David Gregory Scramble to Avoid Answering Hard Questions on Banker Bailouts and Bonuses

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Meet the Press host David Gregory is one of the most shameless and consistent media shills operating in America today. Rather than use his platform as host of a popular Sunday morning political show to examine the root problems in America, he uses it to provide public relations for the criminal oligarch class and to … Read more

Meet BlueJay the “Law Enforcement Twitter Crime Scanner”

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Consider BlueJay, the “Law Enforcement Twitter Crime Scanner,” which provides real-time, geo-fenced access to every single public tweet so that local police can keep tabs on #gunfire, #meth, and #protest (yes, those are real examples) in their communities. BlueJay is the product of BrightPlanet, whose tagline is “Deep Web Intelligence” and whose board is populated with people like Admiral John Poindexter of Total Information Awareness infamy.

– From an excellent ArsTechnica article published yesterday

This past weekend, I highlighted the trend of the rapidly growing commercial spy industry and focused on a shadowy Italian company called Hacking Team. Today I have come across a different monitoring program called BlueJay, which is the product of a company called Bright Planet. Amongst other things, Bright Planet boasts that:

  • BlueJay captures tweets from the entire Twitter firehose unlike all other products on the market.
  • BlueJay is invisible and covert
  • BlueJay captures geographically tagged tweets.

Here’s how it works.

More from ArsTechnica:

Recent leaks about the NSA’s Internet spy programs have sparked renewed interest in government surveillance, though the leaks touch largely on a single form of such surveillance—the covert one. But so-called “open source intelligence” (OSINT) is also big business— and not just at the national/international level. New tools now mine everything from “the deep Web” to Facebook posts to tweets so that cops and corporations can see what locals are saying. Due to the sheer scale of social media posts, many tools don’t even aim at providing a complete picture. Others do.

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Bitpay Surpasses 10,000 Bitcoin Merchants, Up a Staggering 10x Year-over-Year

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Bitpay is the premier Bitcoin payment processing company and they have experienced staggering growth over the past year. This morning the company issued a press release announcing the fact it had signed up its 10,000th merchant, an increase of 10x from the number about a year ago when the company first crossed the 1,000 threshold. I highlighted the incredible growth of Bitpay back in March of this year, when it first hit 4,000 merchants and was adding 1,000 a month, a run rate that has incredibly enough continued.

I also had the pleasure of hearing Bitpay CEO, Anthony Gallippi, speak at the Inside Bitcoins Conference a little over a month ago in NYC. To read my summary of this excellent conference click here. Bitcoin has excited me so much in 2013 that I created my own t-shirts, available only for bitcoin payments through my website. So if you have a few BTC burning a hole in your pocket, you can get one by clicking on the image below. It’s an excellent conversation starter.

BTCshirts

Now here are some highlights from Bitpay’s press release:

ATLANTA — September 16, 2013 — BitPay Inc, the world leader in business solutions for virtual currencies, announces it has over 10,000 approved merchants in 164 countries using its service to accept bitcoin payments. This milestone was reached almost exactly one year after the company approved its 1,000th merchant.

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The Million Mask March…Coming November 5, 2013

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I first read about the Million Mask March about a month ago and thought it was something to keep an eye on, but not yet interesting enough to post on. With a month and a half left to go, it has been gaining enough momentum for me to highlight this event. While the main focus … Read more

Hackers For Government Hire: A Growing and Deeply Disturbing Industry

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Wikileaks recently continued the release of what they refer to as the “Spy Files.” These files provide a look into some of the companies behind the rapid commercialization of the spy equipment industry, who’s clients include repressive governments and dictatorial regimes around the world. In a press release announcing these files Wikileaks states: Across the … Read more