Karl Denninger is an American technology businessman, finance blogger, and political activist, sometimes referred to as a founding member of the

Tea Party movement The Tea Party movement was an American fiscally conservative political movement within the Republican Party that began in 2009. Members of the movement called for lower taxes and for a reduction of the national debt and federal budget defi ...

Technology entrepreneurship

Denninger was the founder and CEO of MCSNet in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. Opened as Macro Computer Solutions, Incorporated in 1987, it expanded its service offerings in 1993 to become one of the area's first commercial

internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privat ...

s. Among its customers was the

Chicago Public Library The Chicago Public Library (CPL) is the public library system that serves the City of Chicago in the U.S. state of Illinois. It consists of 81 locations, including a central library, two regional libraries, and branches distributed throughout the ...

, which relied on MCSNet for both internet access and

web hosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing we ...

. In 1997 he led a coalition of ISPs in setting up the Enhanced Domain Name System, a short-lived

alternative DNS root The Internet uses the Domain Name System (DNS) to associate numeric computer IP addresses with human-readable names. The top level of the domain name hierarchy, the DNS root, contains the top-level domains that appear as the suffixes of all Intern ...

which allowed registrants to add their own

generic top-level domain Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last level of eve ...

s. Denninger continued to run MCSNet until August 1998, when he sold it to Winstar Communications for an undisclosed amount. After the sale of MCSNet, he moved to

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

, where he began to devote more time to stock trading and political activism.

Blogging and political activism

Denninger is a founding contributor to the libertarian-oriented finance blog market-ticker.org, and has used the internet to bring attention to his concerns with the financial system. He now utilizes his blog to sell his home networking daemon and sell the artwork of his highly independent daughter. In the aftermath of the March 2008 collapse of

Bear Stearns The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. was a New York-based global investment bank, securities trading and brokerage firm that failed in 2008 as part of the global financial crisis and recession, and was subsequently sold to JPMorgan Chase. The comp ...

, he helped found the website FedUpUSA.org He came to national attention for the criticisms of the

Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, often called the "bank bailout of 2008", was proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, passed by the 110th United States Congress, and signed into law by President George W. Bush. It became ...

which he posted on FedUpUSA.org in September that year. Of special concern to Denninger was the

over-the-counter Over-the-counter (OTC) drugs are medicines sold directly to a consumer without a requirement for a prescription from a healthcare professional, as opposed to prescription drugs, which may be supplied only to consumers possessing a valid prescr ...

trading of

credit default swap A credit default swap (CDS) is a financial swap agreement that the seller of the CDS will compensate the buyer in the event of a debt default (by the debtor) or other credit event. That is, the seller of the CDS insures the buyer against som ...

s, as well as the high

leverage Leverage or leveraged may refer to: *Leverage (mechanics), mechanical advantage achieved by using a lever * ''Leverage'' (album), a 2012 album by Lyriel *Leverage (dance), a type of dance connection *Leverage (finance), using given resources to ...

of financial institutions; his objections to the bailout plan stemmed from the fact that it did not address either of these issues. He has also spoken out against high-frequency trading, particularly in the aftermath of the 2010 Flash Crash. Denninger was also one of the early members of the

, sometimes referred to as a founder. On January 20, 2009, the day of President Obama's first inauguration, he published a blog post calling on readers to mail

tea bag A tea bag, or the compound teabag, is a small, porous, sealed bag or packet, typically containing tea leaves or the leaves of other herbs, which is immersed in water to steep and make an infusion. Originally used only for tea (''Camellia ...

s to the White House and Congress on February 1, echoing a suggestion by a commenter on one of his earlier blog posts. However, Denninger later expressed concern with the Tea Party movement, stating in an October 20, 2010, blog post that Republicans had hijacked the movement and perverted its original goals to the standard Republican concerns of "guns, gays and God".

Media appearances

Denninger has been invited as a guest on a variety of television and radio programs. In July 2009, he appeared on ''

CNBC CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk sho ...

Reports''. In April 2010, he appeared on the '' Glenn Beck'' show, where he spoke about the FedUpUSA.org website. In October 2011, he appeared on ''

The Dylan Ratigan Show ''The Dylan Ratigan Show'' is an American television program on MSNBC hosted by Dylan Ratigan, formerly of sister CNBC's '' Fast Money''. It aired weekdays from 4pm to 5pm Eastern Time. The show was previously known as ''Morning Meeting with Dylan ...

'' on

MSNBC MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and politi ...

to voice his support for the

Occupy Wall Street Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a protest movement against economic inequality and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Wall Street financial district, in September 2011. It gave rise to t ...

movement. In January 2013, he spoke with

Voice of Russia Voice of Russia ( rus, Голос России, r=Golos Rossii), commonly abbreviated VOR, was the Russian government's international radio broadcasting service from 1993 until 2014, when it was reorganised as Radio Sputnik. Its interval signal w ...

in an interview covering a variety of topics, including the

United States public debt The national debt of the United States is the total national debt owed by the federal government of the United States to Treasury security holders. The national debt at any point in time is the face value of the then-outstanding Treasury sec ...

, Medicare reform, and his opposition to

Keynesian economics Keynesian economics ( ; sometimes Keynesianism, named after British economist John Maynard Keynes) are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) strongly influences economic output a ...

Books

* ''Leverage: How Cheap Money Will Destroy the World'', Wiley, November 2011, .

References

External links

The Market Ticker
Denninger's financially focused blog
Market Ticker Forum
the blog's user forums
FedUpUSA
site Denninger helped found to bring public awareness regarding financial system and government corruption {{DEFAULTSORT:Denninger, Karl Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American male bloggers American bloggers American computer businesspeople American finance and investment writers Tea Party movement activists 21st-century American non-fiction writers