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

Trump Sides with the FBI Against Apple; On Torture Proclaims “Water Boarding Is Fine but Not Tough Enough”

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When Donald Trump was asked about Apple’s decision, Trump did not bring up the complexity of the situation, the constant battle between government and individual, between private and public selves, between technology and law enforcement. He did not commend Apple for trying to stave off government’s incursion into our personal details. He did what Trump does: He came up with the easiest, simplest, basest possible reaction to an endlessly complicated issue, and he ran with it.

On Fox & Friends this morning, Trump said, “To think that Apple won’t allow us to get into her cellphone? Who do they think they are? No, we have to open it.”

– From Bloomberg

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from the 2016 election season is the obvious fact that the GOP base has absolutely no interest in freedom, civil liberties or the Constitution. The huge success of the megalomaniac statist Donald Trump, as well as the pitiful performance of Rand Paul, has proven this beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Many people will argue this has been obvious for quite some time, but the reason I bring it up is because both Ron Paul and his son Rand believed that the Republican party could serve as a useless albeit unwilling vessel to bring back liberty to these United States. The 2016 GOP primary has proven once and for all that this was pure fantasy.

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Apple Vows to Defend Its Customers as the FBI Launches a War on Privacy and Security

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Some would argue that building a backdoor for just one iPhone is a simple, clean-cut solution. But it ignores both the basics of digital security and the significance of what the government is demanding in this case.

In today’s digital world, the “key” to an encrypted system is a piece of information that unlocks the data, and it is only as secure as the protections around it. Once the information is known, or a way to bypass the code is revealed, the encryption can be defeated by anyone with that knowledge.

The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone. But that’s simply not true. Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.

The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers — including tens of millions of American citizens — from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals. The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe.

We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack. For years, cryptologists and national security experts have been warning against weakening encryption. Doing so would hurt only the well-meaning and law-abiding citizens who rely on companies like Apple to protect their data. Criminals and bad actors will still encrypt, using tools that are readily available to them.

– From Apple CEO Tim Cook’s letter: A Message to Our Customers

I’ve spend most of the morning reading as much as possible about the explosive battle between the FBI and Apple over consumer rights to digital privacy and security. I came away with a refined sense of just how monumental this case is, as well as a tremendous amount of respect for Apple CEO Tim Cook for his public stance against the feds.

Before I get into the issue at hand, some background is necessary. The feds, and the FBI in particular, have been very vocal for a long time now about the desire to destroy strong encryption, i.e., the ability of citizens to communicate privately. A year ago, I wrote the following in the post, By Demanding Backdoors to Encryption, U.S. Government is Undermining Global Freedom and Security:

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Debt Slavery in Action – Texas Man Arrested for Not Paying Student Loan Debt

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Laws are effective only to the extent they are enforced. A law on the books has little impact if prosecution is highly unlikely.

The failure to punish big corporations or their executives when they break the law undermines the foundations of this great country: If justice means a prison sentence for a teenager who steals a car, but it means nothing more than a sideways glance at a CEO who quietly engineers the theft of billions of dollars, then the promise of equal justice under the law has turned into a lie. The failure to prosecute big, visible crimes has a corrosive effect on the fabric of democracy and our shared belief that we are all equal in the eyes of the law.

Under the current approach to enforcement, corporate criminals routinely escape meaningful prosecution for their misconduct. This is so despite the fact that the law is unambiguous: if a corporation has violated the law, individuals within the corporation must also have violated the law. If the corporation is subject to charges of wrongdoing, so are those in the corporation who planned, authorized or took the actions. But even in cases of flagrant corporate law breaking, federal law enforcement agencies – and particularly the Department of Justice (DOJ) – rarely seek prosecution of individuals. In fact, federal agencies rarely pursue convictions of either large corporations or their executives in a court of law. Instead, they agree to criminal and civil settlements with corporations that rarely require any admission of wrongdoing and they let the executives go free without any individual accountability.

– From the post: Elizabeth Warren Releases Blistering Report on Corporate Criminality – Singles Out SEC Uselessness

What a cute little Banana Republic this America has become. Our government can’t put a single bank executive in jail for destroying the global economy, but when a mere peasant is caught not paying back his student debt, a team of U.S. Marshals arrive at his door to arrest him at gunpoint.

Land of the thief, home of the slave, indeed.

Fox26 reports:

Believe it or not, the US Marshals Service in Houston is arresting people for not paying their outstanding federal student loans.

Paul Aker says he was arrested at his home last week for a $1500 federal student loan he received in 1987.

He says seven deputy US Marshals showed up at his home with guns and took him to federal court where he had to sign a payment plan for the 29-year-old school loan.

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Latest Version of Monopoly is Called “Ultimate Banking” and is Completely Cashless

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The war on cash has been in the works for a very, very long time, but the propaganda campaign to convince an always gullible public to accept the scheme seems to have been hatched in earnest late last spring. For example, here are a few excerpts from the post, Martin Armstrong Reports on a Secret Meeting in London to Ban Cash:

Martin Armstrong noted at the time:

I find it extremely perplexing that I have been the only one to report that there is a secret meeting in London where Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University and Willem Butler the chief economist at Citigroup will address the central banks and advocate the elimination of all cash to bring to fruition the day when you cannot buy or sell anything without government approval. When I Googled the issue to see who has picked it up yet, to my surprise Armstrong Economics comes up first. Others are quoting me, and I even find it spreading as the Central Bank of Nigeria, but I have yet to find reports on the meeting taking place in London when my sources are direct.

Other newspapers who have covered my European tour have stated that the “crash” of which I speak is the typical stock market rather than in government. What is concerning me is the silence on this meeting where there are more and more reports about a cashless society would be better.

If we look at the the turning points on the ECM, yes they have been to the day when there has been a concentration of capital in a particular market. However, it has also picked the turning points in political decisions such as the formation of the G5 with 1985.65, the very day Greece asked for help from the IMF in 2010, to the day of 911. What we better keep one eye open for here at night is this birth of a cashless society coming in much faster than expected. Why the secret meeting? Something does not smell right here.

To which I added my own observation:

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Victims of Billionaire Pedophile with Ties to Bill Clinton Claim Federal Prosecutors Offered “Sweetheart Deal”

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Prosecutors went to great lengths to keep secret the non-prosecution agreement reached in 2007 with Jeffrey Epstein, attorneys for the victims allege, “because of the strong objection they would have faced from victims of Epstein’s abuse, and because of the public criticism that would have resulted from allowing a politically-connected billionaire who had sexually abused more than 30 minor girls to escape … with only a county court jail sentence.”

Before any allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced in 2005, Trump and Bill Clinton spoke glowingly of Epstein, and court records have included documents and testimony suggesting both men flew with Epstein on his private jets.

Court files document long-running ties between Epstein and the former president. Bill Clinton flew on at least six trips with Epstein and his entourage in 2002 and 2003 including to international destinations such as Paris, Bangkok and Brunei, according to logs kept by one of Epstein’s pilots.

And as Epstein first faced federal prosecution a few years later, one of his lawyers, Gerald B. Lefcourt, wrote to prosecutors to tout Epstein’s pedigree as “part of the original group that conceived of the Clinton Global Initiative,” according to a letter attached to Wednesday’s court filing.

At the heart of this week’s court filings is a deal Epstein reached with federal prosecutors in September of 2007 that spared him from a federal prosecution. After an extensive investigation by the Palm Beach police and the FBI, the Justice Department effectively immunized Epstein for multiple alleged offenses involving underage girls in exchange for his guilty pleas to two comparatively minor sex crimes in Florida state court. And Epstein’s lawyers persuaded the federal government to keep the terms of the agreement secret, according to the court filing by victims’ attorneys Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell.

On the day the deal was signed, an attorney for Epstein sent an email to the federal prosecutor handling the case which read, “Please do whatever you can to keep this from becoming public,” according to an email exchange attached to Wednesday’s filing.

If he’d been charged and convicted on the federal counts, Epstein might have spent the rest of his life in prison. Instead, he now splits his time between his permanent residence – a private island estate off the coast of St. Thomas – and homes in Paris, New Mexico and New York City, where he owns what is purported to be one of the largest single-family residences in Manhattan.

– From the ABC News article: Victims: Feds Hid ‘Sweetheart’ Deal for Sex Offender With Deep Political Ties 

As I’ve said time and time again, the greatest cancer of all cancers afflicting these United States is a startling deterioration in the rule of law. Specifically, the institutionalization of a two-tier justice system in which the rich and powerful can (literally) get away with murder, while poor inner-city kids get locked up for “victimless” crimes.

One of the most egregious examples of our Banana Republic criminal justice system relates to billionaire pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. A man who was barely punished for sexually abusing and exploiting at least 30 underage children.

This is a topic I touched upon a little over a year ago in the post, Oligarch Justice – Powerful Pedophiles Roam Free as Journalist Barrett Brown Returns to Jail. Here are a few excerpts:

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Liberty Links 2/12/16

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Below are links to some of the more interesting and important reads I came across today, but will not be publishing on in detail.

Hillary Is the Candidate of the War Machine (Excellent read, Huffington Post)

Bernie Sanders-Supporting PAC Wants Superdelegates to “Follow the Will of Voters” (Reason)

Ahead of Debate, Liberal Groups Challenge Clinton to List Candidates for Treasury Secretary, Attorney General (Washington Post)

Bernie Sanders Sweeps Online Polls After Dominating Sixth Democratic Debate (Huffington Post)

Sanders Raises $7.1 Million After New Hampshire Win (Bloomberg)

Bernie Sanders Outpaces Hillary Clinton in Silicon Valley Contributions (Biz Journal)

Yanis Varoufakis on Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and Europe (YouTube video)

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Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton – “I’m Proud to Say Henry Kissinger is Not My Friend”

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He’s a thug, and a crook, and a liar, and a pseudo-intellectual and a murderer. Ok? Those things are factually verifiable.

Kissinger deserves vigorous prosecution for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture.

A good liar must have a good memory: Kissinger is a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory.

– Quotes by Christopher Hitchens

One of the more bizarre memes that continues to be parroted by the establishment media is this idea that Hillary Clinton is so much stronger than Bernie Sanders when it comes to foreign policy. Sure, if your definition of “strength” consists of cheerleading for the cataclysmic Iraq War and propagating a series of war crimes and international fiascos as Secretary of State, then I suppose that’s true.

For some of Henry Kissinger’s greatest genocidal hits, I turn to a fantastic article published in the Nation last week titled, Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton’s Tutor in War and Peace:

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America’s Corrupt Media – How Reporters Took Direct Orders from Hillary Clinton’s Staff

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It is the job of the Fourth Estate to act as a check and a restraint on the others, to illumine the dark corners of Ministries, to debunk the bureaucrat, to throw often unwelcome light on the measures and motives of our rulers. ‘News’, as Hearst once remarked, ‘is something which somebody wants suppressed: all the rest is advertising’. That job is an essential one and it is bound to be unpopular; indeed, in a democracy, it may be argued that the more unpopular the newspapers are with the politicians the better they are performing their most vital task.

– Brian R. Roberts from a October 29, 1955 article in the London periodical “Time & Tide”

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

– H.L. Mencken

If you really want to know how weak Hillary Clinton is as a candidate, you merely have to appreciate that the U.S. media essentially acts as her own personal PR firm, yet the public still recognizes her as a dishonest crook. Brace yourself for the following story, it’s huge.

Earlier this week, we learned from Gawker that at least one U.S. reporter traded content in his article for information from Hillary Clinton’s staff while she was Secretary of State. In what is an almost hard to believe exchange, Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic,  agreed to insert specific words and imagery into his article in return for a copy of Hillary’s upcoming speech at the Council on Foreign Relations.

We have the exact exchange thanks to emails released from a 2012 Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA). Gawker reports:

The emails in question, which were exchanged by Ambinder, then serving as The Atlantic’s politics editor, and Philippe Reines, Clinton’s notoriously combative spokesman and consigliere, turned up thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request we filed in 2012 (and which we are currently suing the State Department over). The same request previously revealed that Politico’s chief White House correspondent, Mike Allen, promised to deliver positive coverage of Chelsea Clinton, and, in a separate exchange, permitted Reines to ghost-write an item about the State Department for Politico’s Playbook newsletter. Ambinder’s emails with Reines demonstrate the same kind of transactional reporting, albeit to a much more legible degree: In them, you can see Reines “blackmailing” Ambinder into describing a Clinton speech as “muscular” in exchange for early access to the transcript. In other words, Ambinder outsourced his editorial judgment about the speech to a member of Clinton’s own staff.

On the morning of July 15, 2009, Ambinder sent Reines a blank email with the subject line, “Do you have a copy of HRC’s speech to share?” His question concerned a speech Clinton planned to give later that day at the Washington, D.C. office of the Council on Foreign Relations, an influential think tank. Three minutes after Ambinder’s initial email, Reines replied with three words: “on two conditions.” After Ambinder responded with “ok,” Reines sent him a list of those conditions:

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Video of the Day – See What Happens When College Kids Face Microaggressions

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If you’ve had enough of the pc police on college campuses and need a good laugh, this video is a must watch.

Brilliantly done.

For some of my previous thoughts on college cry bullies, see:

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Lines Around the Block to Buy Gold in London…Banks Placing “Unusually Large Orders for Physical”

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First, let’s look at the improved fundamentals. Gold bugs will exasperatingly proclaim that fundamentals have been great for the past four years yet the price plunged anyway, so who cares about fundamentals? To this I would respond with two observations. First, large institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds have been anticipating a rate hike cycle for a very long time now. They didn’t know when, but they expected it. The fact that the gold bugs never believed this is irrelevant; what matters is that big money believed it, and it was perceived to be very gold negative. In their minds, this anticipated rate hike cycle would confirm that things were getting back to normal, and if things are normal you don’t need to own gold, right?

The problem is that this assumption is quickly being called into question. Sure the Fed hiked rates once, but it is starting to look more and more like a policy error. Meanwhile, other major central banks around the world are going in the opposite direction, toward negative rates. I am a huge believer in market psychology, and the psychology dominating the minds of most institutional investors over the past few years has been that things were slowly getting back to normal. This has weighed on institutional demand for gold in a big way, and been a meaningful factor in the bear market (manipulation aside). If this psychology shifts, the shift back into gold could be very meaningful.

While that backdrop is interesting in its own right, what may make the move into gold that much more explosive is the lack of alternative investments…

– From the February 3, 2016 post: GOLD – It’s Time to Pay Attention

What a difference a couple of weeks can make. The Telegraph is reporting the following:

BullionByPost, Britain’s biggest online gold dealer, said it has already taken record-day sales of £5.6m as traders pile into gold following fears the world is on the brink of another financial crisis.

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