Karl Denninger was the CEO of MCSNet in Chicago, one of the area's first Internet providers. He is a founding contributer to conservative blog market-ticker.org and was one of the early members of the Tea Party movement ("I cannot take credit for the idea floated on the forum, but I do like it").[1] Rick Santelli's CNBC mention of a tea party followed Mr. Denninger's blog entry on January 20.
On January 20, 2009 Denninger published a blog post regarding the suggestion to mail tea-bags to the White House and Congress. The title of his post was "Tea Party February 1st?" It was written on the same day and in response to President Obama's inauguration,[2] even though Denninger had voted for Obama.[3] The blog-post took issue with the bank bailouts, the US national debt and "the fraud and abuse in our banking and financial system" which included the predatory lending practices at the center of the home mortgage foreclosure crisis.[4]
Denninger, who helped form FedUpUSA in the wake of the March 2008 Federal Reserve bail-out of Bear Sterns, has been a guest on MSNBC, Glenn Beck and CNBC Reports.[5][6] By February 1, the idea had spread to various conservative and libertarian-oriented blogs, forums, websites and through a viral email campaign.[7]
On Oct 20, 2010, he blogged that Republicans had hijacked the Tea Party movement, and perverted its original goals to the standard Republican concerns of "guns, gays and God.".[8]
Denninger stated on Russia Today that he supports the Occupy Wall Street movement.[9]