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

Google Transparency Report: Government Surveillance Requests Up 33% in 2012

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Don’t worry I’m sure the increase is certainly related to finding Al Qaeda in the U.S., as opposed to targeting domestic civil rights activists.  I wonder how many of these requests were related to Aaron Swartz, the computer genius that federal prosecutors drove to suicide because they were still bitter about the role played in destroying SOPA.  Or are the requests aimed at “far right” extremists, folks that can be identified according to West Point by their defense of “civil activism, individual freedoms and self-government.”

Once again, the EFF deserves our highest praise for bringing this info to us.  From the EFF:

This morning, Google released their semi-annual transparency report, and once again, it revealed a troubling trend: Internet surveillance around the world continues to rise, with the United States leading the way in demands for user data.

Google received over 21,000 requests for data on over 33,000 users in the last six months from governments around the world, a 70% increase since Google started releasing numbers in 2010. The United States accounted for almost 40% the total requests (8,438) and the number of users (14,791). The total numbers in the US for 2012 amounted to a 33% increase from 2011. And while Google only complied with two-thirds of the total requests globally, they complied with 88% of the requests in the United States.

And the most troubling part?

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Gallup Poll: Americans Most Negative on the Nation and Economy in 30 Years

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I guess Americans just haven’t heard of a little something called the stock market.  Isn’t that right Bernanke?  Wasn’t the stock market rally you engineered supposed to make everyone feel all nice and confident?  Well the great middle class squeeze continues, as the stock market is for the 1% what food stamps are for the poor.  They are just strategies to keep these groups apathetic and obedient.  The middle class isn’t buying it though, as is evidenced by this recent Gallup Poll conducted January 7-10, 2013.  From Gallup:

PRINCETON, NJ — U.S. President Barack Obama begins his second term at a time when Americans are as negative about the state of the country and its prospects going forward as they have been in more than three decades. Fewer than four in 10 Americans (39%) rate the current status of the U.S. at the positive end of a zero to 10 scale. This is about the same as in 2010, but it is fewer than have said so at any point since 1979. As they usually are, Americans are more upbeat in their predictions of where the U.S. will be in five years (48% positive), but this is also lower than at any time since 1979.

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Video of the Day: Shit the FBI Says!

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This is pretty hilarious.  Be afraid my little sheeple, there is a terrorist under every bed!  Make sure you stay fearful, servile and ignorant.  Just the way the government wants you.  Hey after all “we just wanna talk.”  😉 Enjoy! In Liberty, Mike Like this post? Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G Follow me on Twitter.

Catalonia Declares Itself a Sovereign Entity: My Thoughts

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The overriding trend globally is decentralization, which is the natural reaction to an overly centralized monetary and financial system that has done nothing but enslave the masses while the connected global oligarchs loot everything in sight.  The more the power structure fights this trend, the more chaotic the transition to decentralization will be.  However, decentralization is inevitable no matter how hard these crooks fight to preserve the current system.

From the Associated Press:

MADRID (AP) — The parliament of Spain’s powerful northeastern region of Catalonia has approved a largely symbolic declaration stating the region is a sovereign entity, paving the way for a referendum on independence from Spain.

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British Newspaper Calls for a 3rd Obama Term

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This Op Ed by Mary Dejevsky in the UK’s Independent consists of such rampant propaganda and drivel it is almost impossible to believe she is not on the official payroll of the Obama Administration.  Who would’ve thought the second British Invasion would consist of Piers Morgan and Mary Dejevsky?  I miss the Beatles.

Prepare for a sense of overwhelming disbelief as you read the following excerpts.  From The Independent:

What a difference four years make. When Barack Obama delivers his second inaugural address, as he will on the Washington Mall on Monday, he will do so confident that he is hitting the ground running.

Really, then why does a recent Gallup poll say Americans have never been so downbeat on the nation?

And while a second term frees him from many of the constraints that curb the ambitions of all first-term presidents, the sense already lurks that his presidential promise is only starting to be fulfilled.

What promise?  Continuing and expanding Bush’s unconstitutional policies under the guise of “liberalism?”

Yet there are compelling reasons why two four-year terms may not be enough for a competent and popular US president today. The first, and most obvious, is that a maximum eight-year lease at the White House is short by international standards.

Silly me, for a minute there I thought we were a sovereign nation capable of making our own decisions.

Now here is where she really loses it…

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NEVER Talk to the FBI Without a Lawyer…Here is Why

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This is a great talk with the civil libertarian and defense attorney Harvey Silverglate.  He is the same person that was mentioned in my recent post: A Broken Justice System: “Most Americans Commit About Three Felonies a Day.”  This video is not just for those that fear they may one day be paid a visit … Read more

Corrupt Chinese Politicians are Buying Billions in U.S. Real Estate

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Many of us spent much of 2012 confused about how the U.S. real estate market was improving within the context of a broke and unemployed citizenry.  Well as time has passed the answers to our questions have been revealed.  The criminals are piling in.  I first explained a couple of weeks ago how the financial oligarchs in the United States are currently in a bidding war to become America’s slumlords in my post:  America Meet Your New Slumlord: Wall Street.

Now we also discover that part of the bid to U.S. real estate has come from another criminal class. In this case, we are talking about corrupt Chinese officials who are pulling their ill gotten gains from their homeland and desperately placing it in real estate all over the globe.  From The Telegraph:

As China’s new leaders intensify a campaign to root out corruption, thousands of Communist party officials have been panicked into a fire sale of their illicit properties while billions of pounds have been smuggled overseas.

It said the volume of deals had intensified by “a hundred times” after Xi Jinping, the incoming Chinese president, warned that corruption could kill the Party and put one of the country’s most vigorous and resolute politicians, Wang Qishan, in charge of stamping out graft.

It also claimed that an astonishing $1 trillion (£630 billion), equivalent to 40 per cent of Britain’s annual GDP, had been smuggled out of China illegally in 2012.

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New Study Shows: Food Fraud Soared 60% Last Year

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So what is food fraud anyway?  Well, it’s sort of what you would expect.  It’s when companies label food one way, but the truth turns out to be completely different.  I have been predicting an escalation in this trend for years, since it was obvious that as inflation led to increases in food prices, companies would resort to this type of behavior to keep margins inflated.

So in their latest study, the non-profit food fraud detectives at the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) show us the extent of this extremely dangerous trend.  From ABC News:

It’s what we expect as shoppers—what’s in the food will be displayed on the label.

But a new scientific examination by the non-profit food fraud detectives the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), discovered rising numbers of fake ingredients in products from olive oil to spices to fruit juice.

In a new database to be released Wednesday, and obtained exclusively by ABC News today, USP warns consumers, the FDA and manufacturers that the amount of food fraud they found is up by 60 percent this year.

So what are the most commonly faked products?

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How Much Power Does the Queen of England Have? Answer: A Lot

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It’s amazing how this article flew so far under the radar.  I will never forget a conversation with my dad when I was a little kid in which I asked about the Queen of England.  Something in my DNA even at a very young age was disturbed by the concept of royalty.  I remember his answer like it was yesterday:  “Michael, the Queen is largely just ceremonial, she has no real power.”  I was probably nine years old or so when he told me that.  I thought it was strange at the time and I never forgot his answer.  It wasn’t his fault of course, that is what everyone is very intentionally taught to believe.  Well, it turns out that little old lady with a crown on her head running around the bucolic fields of England has some power after all.  Who would’ve thought!  From the UK’s Guardian:

The extent of the Queen and Prince Charles’s secretive power of veto over new laws has been exposed after Downing Street lost its battle to keep information about its application secret.

Whitehall papers prepared by Cabinet Office lawyers show that overall at least 39 bills have been subject to the most senior royals’ little-known power to consent to or block new laws. They also reveal the power has been used to torpedo proposed legislation relating to decisions about the country going to war.

The internal Whitehall pamphlet was only released following a court order and shows ministers and civil servants are obliged to consult the Queen and Prince Charles in greater detail and over more areas of legislation than was previously understood.

“This is opening the eyes of those who believe the Queen only has a ceremonial role,” said Andrew George, Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives, which includes land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, the Prince of Wales’ hereditary estate.

“It shows the royals are playing an active role in the democratic process and we need greater transparency in parliament so we can be fully appraised of whether these powers of influence and veto are really appropriate. At any stage this issue could come up and surprise us and we could find parliament is less powerful than we thought it was.”

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