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

Debut Interview with The Nomad Capitalist

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I’m very pleased to make available my debut interview with Andrew Henderson of the Nomad Capitalist.  The range of topics discussed here is extensive.  From the IRS scandal, to Bitcoin and gold, to whether or not it makes sense to stick around in the good old USA to fight for liberty.  It’s always enjoyable to … Read more

Pennsylvania Looks to Legalize Payday Loans by Calling Them “Mirco-Loans”

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The exploitation of the poor through payday loans in America is one of the most underreported stories of 2013, even within the alternative media world.  I first wrote about it and the role our big bailed out banks play back in February in my piece:  TBTF Banks Enter Payday Loan Business with 500% Interest Rates.

The problem with stories like this getting such little coverage, is that the trend will invariably spread like a cancer without public awareness and outrage.  Take Pennsylvania for example.  The state has laws that make payday loans illegal, but state legislators want to do away with this.  They made their first attempt back in 2012 with House Bill 2191, which never made it to the floor for a vote.  Not being the types to take no for an answer, the state legislators are back.  This time state Sen. Patrick Browne is looking for co-sponsors for a bill that would allow punitive interest rates under the guise of calling it micro-lending.  From the Post-Gazette:

“A rose by any other name” equals a rose.

“Put lipstick on a pig” equals a pig.

“Micro-loan program” equals a predatory payday loan/debt trap.

Seeking to protect vulnerable people from being trapped in a vicious debt cycle, Pennsylvania has long outlawed the usurious practice of predatory payday loans.

However, lenders are trying to undo these limits. Last year, House Bill 2191, which would have undone this 100-plus-year-old protection, thankfully never made it to the floor for a vote.

While no such legislation has yet to be introduced, state Sen. Patrick Browne, R-Allentown, is seeking co-sponsors. Rather than calling it “payday lending,” it is touted as a “micro-loan program” promising a “reasonable annual percentage interest rate” to “eliminate the endless cycle of debt,” to “strengthen consumer protection” and to “protect our military families and veterans.”

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What’s in Your Xbox? A Lot of Surveillance Capabilities

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Attention all gamers.  There’s something you may want to be aware of before you plug in that new Xbox One.  Apparently, there are a lot of Big Brother features embedded into the system, so much so that that Germany’s privacy chief, Peter Schaar, is raising serious concerns. From Slate:

The complaint stems from the latest version of the motion-sensing Kinect technology. The Kinect device designed for the Xbox One can monitor users’ movements with a camera that sees in the dark, picks up voice commands with a microphone, and reads your heart rate using infrared cameras that track blood flow underneath the skin. Because the device is connected to the Internet, malicious hackers could potentially hijack the console and use it for spying.  In addition, Microsoft has filed a patent that suggests it is interested in using Kinect to count the number of people in a room in order to charge each person for providing pay-per-user content. The patent outlines how a camera could be used with face and gesture recognition as part of a Kinect-style system to enforce “age and identity restrictions” on certain kinds of content, effectively granting copyright holders virtual access to private dwellings, as Wired described it.

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Carrington Bails: More Smart Money Leaves the “Buy to Rent” Game

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“Buy to rent” has been one of my favorite topics to write about as of late, since the creation of this “asset class,” combined with the total madness that follows from money printing, has once again created a major housing bubble in many markets in these United States.  In recent months, I’ve noted how some of the earliest participants in this market have pulled back.  Most notably Och Ziff, but now Carrington as well.

The signs are everywhere that this market is not only overheated, but downright filled with insanity, and as Carrington’s head Bruce Rose states “stupid money.”  Las Vegas is a prime example of this, where 8% of single family homes are vacant, yet new construction permits are up 50%.  More from Bloomberg:

Hedge fund manager Bruce Rose was among the first investors to coax institutional money into the mom and pop business of single-family home rentals, raising $450 million last year from Oaktree Capital Group LLC. 

Now, with house prices climbing at the fastest pace in seven years and investors swamping the rental market, Rose says it no longer makes sense to be a buyer.

“We just don’t see the returns there that are adequate to incentivize us to continue to invest,” Rose, 55, chief executive officer of Carrington Holding Co. LLC, said in an interview at his Aliso Viejo, California office. “There’s a lot of — bluntly — stupid money that jumped into the trade without any infrastructure, without any real capabilities and a kind of build-it-as-you-go mentality that we think is somewhat irresponsible.”

No joke, I actually heard an ad on local Boulder radio that explained how you could “get in” on buy to rent schemes.

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I Pledge Allegiance…

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I’m on a plane about to take off for Colorado, but figured I’d leave everyone with my updated Pledge of Allegiance applicable for modern day America.  Enjoy comrades. I pledge allegiance to the Fed of the United States of Bernakistan, and to the S&P 500 for which it stands, one ponzi, under Federal Reserve Notes, with … Read more

High School Teacher Faces Disciplinary Action for Informing Students of Their Rights

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Rather than being reprimanded, Illinois high school teacher John Dryden, should be held up as an example of what it truly means to be a teacher.  When confronted with a situation where he knew his students might be giving up their Fifth Amendment rights, the social studies teacher did what he believed was the right and … Read more

Chants of “End the Fed”…Heard at Anti-Monsanto Rallies

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While most of my readers know about the widespread anti-Monsanto/GMO rallies that took place all over the world this past weekend, the rest of the public has no idea due to a mainstream media blackout.  That’s ok because that industry is dying quickly anyway.  Although I haven’t spent much time watching footage from the rallies, I … Read more

Video of the Day: Government Explained

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Ever wonder what would happen if an alien came down to earth and asked an average human to explain the dominant political systems in place?  Although the video is more than a year old, I had never watched it before and find it a really effective way to wake people up as to how absolutely … Read more

The Scorecard: 8,000 Wall Street Protesters Arrested, Zero Bankers

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America really has become the “land of the thief, home of the slave.”  While a minority of awake citizens desperately tries to shake their neighbors from their deep slumber, the masses continue to sit in front of the television, suck their thumbs and watch Desperate Housewives, while the oligarchs laugh incredulously at them all the … Read more

Noam Chomsky on the Classification System: “It’s to Protect the State from the Citizens”

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I’ve spent quite a lot of time studying declassified internal documents, and written a lot about them. In fact, anybody who’s worked through the declassified record can see very clearly the reason for classification is very rarely to protect the state or the society from enemies.  Most of the time it’s to protect the state … Read more