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

CISPA – The New Big Brother Bill and Why You Should Hate it

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My Take: The articles below speak for themselves.  After popular revulsion was able to thwart the prior Constitution demolishing internet spy bills, our “representatives” in Congress have regrouped and passed something far worse in the House with a vote now set for the Senate.  As I have maintained for quite a long time, I believe much of Congress is cognizant of their criminal behavior and more importantly they view themselves as better than “we the people” and are now openly manifesting their fear and disgust for the citizenry by passing authoritarian bill after authoritarian bill to protect themselves from the people they supposedly represent.  I want to close my thoughts with a powerful quote from one of my American heroes – Henry David Thoreau.  I’m not trying to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t do, but I am one hundred percent certain that we all need to think about these things more deeply than ever before.

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

I agree with the above.  I do not answer to any man or man-made institution. We must answer to something far higher than that, whatever that may mean to you.  We are sovereign human beings and we should never under any circumstances live on our knees or expect our others to do so.

One final thing before I leave you with the CISPA articles.  My grandmother just recently passed away.  While it is a sad time for my family, she had been very sick for a long time and I know she is now at peace.  Besos y amor Granty.

What Everyone Who Uses The Internet Needs To Know About CISPA

By Annie-Rose Strasser and Scott Keyes on Apr 27, 2012 at 5:10 pm

Congress is on the cusp of passing a new bill that could threaten any internet user’s civil liberties. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, a digital equivalent of allowing the government to fight perceived threats by monitoring which books citizens check out from the library, passed the House yesterday and will now be taken up by the Senate.

Online advocates, fresh off their victory against the Stop Online Piracy Act, are now gearing up to oppose CISPA because of the disastrous effect the bill could have for private information on the internet. The bill’s opponents argue that it goes too far in the name of cybersecurity, endangering citizens’ personal online information by giving the government access to anything from users’ private emails to their browsing history.

As the fight in the Senate begins, here is everything you need to know about CISPA:

CISPA’s broad language will likely give the government access to anyone’s personal information with few privacy protections: CISPA allows the government access to any “information pertaining directly to a vulnerability of, or threat to, a system or network of a government or private entity.” There is little indication of what this information could include, and what it means to be ‘pertinent’ to cyber security. Without boundaries, any internet user’s personal, private information would likely be fair game for the government.

It supersedes all other provisions of the law protecting privacy: As the bill is currently written, CISPA would apply “notwithstanding any other provision of law.” In other words, privacy restrictions currently in place would not apply to CISPA. As a result, companies could disclose more personal information about users than necessary. As Technica writes, “if a company decides that your private emails, your browsing history, your health care records, or any other information would be helpful in dealing with a ‘cyber threat,’ the company can ignore laws that would otherwise limit its disclosure.”

The bill completely exempts itself from the Freedom of Information Act: Citizens and journalists have access to most things the government does via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a key tool for increasing transparency. However, CISPA completely exempts itself from FOIA requests. The Sunlight Foundation blasted CISPA for “entirely” dismissing FOIA’s “fundamental safeguard for public oversight of government’s activities.”

Read more here

How CISPA would affect you (faq)

by Declan McCullagh April 27, 2012 4:00 AM PDT

House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers, who says CISPA will not endanger Americans’ privacy.

(Credit: U.S. House of Representatives)

It took a debate that stretched to nearly seven hours, and votes on over a dozen amendments, but the U.S. House of Representatives finally approved the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act on April 26.

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Backlash Against the TSA Shredding the 4th Amendment in Houston

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My Take: This fits in nicely with my article from yesterday about how 9/11 continues to be used to dismantle the Constitution and further our progression into a police state.  For those of you who haven’t read the Constitution in a while this is what the 4th Amendment states: The right of the people to … Read more

The Rebirth of Barter

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Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humiliation and misery.
– Georges Bernanos
(1888-1948)

Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government, a bureaucratic elite which believes our Constitution is outmoded.
– Senator William Jenner
(1908-1985) U.S. Senator (IN-R)

The Final Act of the Uruguay Round, marking the conclusion of the most ambitious trade negotiation of our century, will give birth – in Morocco – to the World Trade Organization, the third pillar of the New World Order, along with the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund.
– Government of Morocco
April, 1994   Source: New York Times, full page ad by the government of Morocco

Before I get into the email I want to remind everyone that I launched a blog a week ago and it can be found here: http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/  I have also recently added a twitter account if you want to get updates on posts that way and there is a button on the right sidebar for that.  Ok, now onto the fun stuff…

The Plates of Power are Shifting
What an amazing time to be alive.  Whereas in prior decades plans for global dominance by TPTB via a global fiat currency and supranational organizations set up under the guise of “the general welfare” were largely kept hidden from the public, there was always going to be a coming out party where these control-freaks needed to “sell” global bondage to the 99.9%.  Whether you believe 9/11 and the collapse of 2008 were planned or just randomly happened is largely irrelevant.  What is indisputable at this stage is that these events were both used as the “crises” to announce their plans.  9/11 was the catalyst to sell the sheeple on the police state here in America and in reality across the entire globe.  Despite the fact that you probably have a greater likelihood of being hit by lightning while riding a tricycle than being killed in a terrorist attack, heightened fear was encouraged and promoted by the media and our government in order to put in the infrastructure for a total police state.  Many people stood up at the time and pointed out that this event was being used to manipulate people into going along with a shredding of the Bill of Rights, but most of us remained completely compliant out of shock and fear.  Then, seven years later we had the global financial crisis.  While 9/11 played on people’s fear of physical harm, the GFC played on people’s fear of financial harm.  As soon as it happened the selling process was on.  The sale was that capitalism had failed.  We needed more government.  More importantly, the Central Planners (the FED and all other Central Banks) were made out to be the heroes.  We were told at the time and continue to be told to this very day that if it were not for the decisive action and infinite wisdom of these mandarins we would be back to the stone age.  Combined, the attacks of 9/11 and the GFC were used as the vehicles through which to more overtly announce and sell the implementation of the long planned New World Order.

As we know, for every action there is a reaction and I am pleased to say that the reaction from the public has generally speaking (albeit very gradually) been in contrast to what TPTB had hoped for.  While I think 9/11 was a great success for them the GFC was not.  In fact, I think it was the absurdness of the actions to save the system since 2008 and the clear theft and consolidation of power by the financial elite since that date that has served more than anything else to wake up tens if not hundreds of millions of people throughout the world.  This has clearly frustrated the plans of these clowns and their concern was quite evident on the face of The Bernank during yesterday’s press conference.  Things are now falling apart so fast for these guys behind the scenes that they are being forced into increasingly desperate action.  This increasingly desperate action is then being translated into more sheeple waking up, which in turn is resulting in the undesired response from the public and even sovereign nations themselves.

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Where in the USA are the Drones Headed?

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Several weeks ago, in one of my weekly articles I mentioned the fact that a bill was recently passed that allocates $63 billion to the FAA to increase the existence of drones operating in U.S. airspace to 30,000 by the end of the decade.  Well the Electronic Frontier Foundation is doing some great work on … Read more

Thought of the Day – Bernanke is Concerned…Very Concerned

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I haven’t turned on my television in months other than to watch Game of Thrones on HBO (I highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it although this season has been slow so far) so it was an interesting experience watching CNBC for the first time in ages on the plane.  Since markets are solely … Read more

Cartoon of the Day!

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This cartoon is from 1912.  As much as things change, I guess they stay the same.  Only problem is back then they responded by passing the Federal Reserve Act a year later.  This time we will need pretty much the exact opposite response.  Less centralization, a return to actual free markets, strong local communities, an … Read more

Marine Officer of 27 Years Blasts Two Party System

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Quick but powerful video here.  Major Christopher Miller who served his country bravely for 27 years as a marine stands up at the Missouri GOP Congressional District Convention to attack the red team/blue team farce that is America’s political system today and voices his support for Ron Paul.  He also blasts the pointless wars, no … Read more

Thought of the Day – House Flipping in Colorado

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I overheard a very interesting conversation in a local coffee shop today between a realtor and a prospective client.  It was the sales pitch that really shocked me as I could have sworn I was transported back to early 2005.  She was using lines like “you’d be a fool not to buy with rates this low,” while also peppering the conversation with anecdotes about this “person she knew” that had just flipped a home for a 40k profit in just a few weeks.  America is back folks.

Does this conversation translate into any actionable investment ideas?  Not really, but it relates back to what I wrote several weeks ago regarding the equity markets.  That people that know better are once again drinking the kool-aid.  The one thing I do feel strongly about is despite ubiquitous prognostications of real estate brokers everywhere, housing is going to be in a deep slump for a very long time (unless we get hyperinflation of course, where anything is better than paper dollars).  Despite all attempts to revive housing and trillions of dollars printed and then spent by the government, all housing has done is bounced around the bottom.  Ex-hyperinflation I expect another major leg down within the next couple of years and even in hyperinflation I expect real estate will do poorly in real terms (ie versus gold).

It is at this point that I’d like to direct you to read a piece I wrote in March 2010 titled: Residential Housing: Why it Doesn’t Stand a Chance.  One of the focal points of this piece was that Americans would become a lot more like the Madrilenos that I lived with during my study abroad in Spain.  Basically a huge percentage of the population lived at home until marriage or even after and there is no reason that cannot happen here.  Not to mention the fact that the youth in America are not only likely to rent but also to simply shove more people in the same space.  All of the secular trends I identified back then hold true today and with over $1 trillion in student debt you better believe it is only going to get worse.  There is also the fact that household formation generally, ie marriage, is also likely to enter a secular decline much like has happened in Japan.  It has been and is my view that household formation in America is about to take a drastic turn lower and this will be the biggest headwind for the market.

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Are Pawn Shops Running Out of Gold?

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My Two Cents: Last Thursday, EZCORP Inc., a pawn shop owner and operator in the United States, reported earnings and in that release they had some very interesting things to say that relate to the gold market.  Take this line from their press release where they discuss why they are lowering guidance. This revision in … Read more