Showing posts with label Economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economics. Show all posts

The Real Reason The West Hates Putin Will Surprise Most People


During the 20th Century the Soviet Union produced many significant social and technological achievements and many innovations. Soviet military technology in some areas, particularly defense systems like the Soviet S300 (which STILL outperform the latest U.S. Patriot ground to air system by some margin) were coveted worldwide.  It also had the world's second-largest economy, By 1970, the Soviet economy had reached its zenith and was estimated at 60 percent of the size of the United States in terms of the estimated commodities (like steel and coal). Its oil and gas reserves were, and still are, vast, with certain sectors unmatched globally.


The Soviet Armed Forces comprised the largest standing military in the world. An NPT designated state, it possessed the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world, a statistical title that Russia still holds today. 

The period from the 1970's onwards marked a consistent decline for the U.S.S.R. The reasons for it are mired in an unsatisfactory narrative which prevents any real understanding of affairs, and that same propagandistic narrative persists to this day, even the "red scare" component despite the fact that todays Russian Federation has abandon communism.  With that in mind, I would make the case that it has actually gotten worse despite manifesting once more in a flavour that reminds me of the Cold War despite a few small cosmetic changes. That narrative is stuck. It's the "Capitalism VS Communism" distraction. A polar one-or-the-other fantasy method of summing up a situation typically has about as much nuance as a "Good VS Evil" children's cartoon, the type that insists on finishing every episode with a moral lesson for kids delivered by the hero.  

Cast your mind back to any Cold War era TV montage, with clips of President Reagan yelling "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!".  This was not so much an organic pop culture dynamic as our sense of nostalgia will try to persuade us.  It was a repeated meme, early memetic engineering in the days where social engineering was used sparingly. It is, nonetheless? A form of "Divide and Rule". 
Here is my detailed history of the evolution of this fascinating tactic, and trust me, it's a lot more interesting than you think. 

In the 1990's things reached rock bottom in the former Soviet Union. Gangsterism and suicide were on the rise as Western Capital Finance vultures descended onto (and into) the newly available carcass. By that I mean the reduced remains of the former U.S.S.R. The new "Free Market Economy" simply did not have the maturity to evolve any internal oversight structures able to function as defense mechanisms from the external economic hitmen.  
More problems were found to emerge internally since the new open economy only benefitted a handful of oligarchs. Well, a few oligarchs along with the Russian mob who rose to international notoriety pushing out more settled international outfits with previously unseen levels of violence. The results on the economy any society were severely traumatic and to this day Russians are motivated by political participation shaped by the single and overpowering need to never again have their fate at the disposal of special interests whom they do not understand or trust.

NA.T.O. was at this point defunct.  The fall of the Soviet Union should have seen it retired, since the official reason for its existence was no more.  The real (unofficial) purpose of the Trans-Atlantic arms manufacturers club was to expand the MIC grift from the U.S. tax base to the entire Western tax base. It follows logically. The more people, the more taxation available to be plundered.  You still need an enemy to justify a threat response, but that need was only apparent to me in the shorter term since they were cooking up the "War on Terror" for that and it was decided to rather feed on the Soviet corpse and make sure it did not re-emerge as a legitimate threat. After all, perceived threats could be more safely sold to the public. N.A.T.O. saw its chance in the 1990's for acting on its secret expansionist agenda, all the while refusing the new Russian Federation even so much as an option to join, which not many people even know about. For the largest arms dealers in the West, selling maximum arms requires maximum enemies, and terror threat being cooked up from the Middle East wasn't quite ready. 

So the situation in the new Russian Federation was not looking good.  Whichever way you slice it there were serious problems, and greedy, calculating forces had put into action a series of events that were supposed to balkanize the territory, leaving its economy plundered.  It was to become a Western vassal in every possible sense. Without being overly dramatic, the once great nation stood on the precipice of doom.

Enter Putin.


For the sake of brevity let's look at the highlights reel only. Russian annual household income increased from an average of $800.00 p/a to over $30 000.00 during the course of Putin's leadership. During the same period, the West (while asleep at the wheel) found itself suddenly and depressingly involved in corporate state capture and economic plunder, with random woke agendas shoved down their throats for good measure.

By the time the 2008 economic crises was being resolved by Obama blatantly robbing taxpayers to bail out the banks, Russians were instead witnessing state crackdowns on corrupt oligarchs, multinational corporations who were known to disregard public health were ejected from the country.  Globalist financial interests and foreign meddling were no longer just causing financial disaster, they had collaborated with intel agencies and were involved with actual psyops.  Case in point is whereby sewing discontent in Georgia they had been funding a separatist movement that at one point was a major threat.  Well, this type of thing needed to be nipped in the bud, and it was. It was ruthlessly crushed by the new Russian leader who it appeared did not get the script.

This upstart had gotten it into his head that his policies would be shaped in the national interest. 
Under Putin jobs, law and order, culture, identity and pride were slowly restored. Efforts to destabilize the territories bordering the Russian Federation from within and externally were managed, less notorious but still corrupt oligarchs and the mob were brought to heel. Syria was basically rescued from Western and Saudi supported terrorists by Russia, forming a bond and affinity between the two nations.  The Russian President has obtained a cult like status in some sectors for resuscitation of the nation's economy under the most hostile conditions unimaginable.

This is no small feat. I picked up long before there was any traction for it in alternative media discourse that any plan for Russia to succeed would involve neutralizing threats that were actively seeking to cause it harm.  It was not Russia that was naive and too trusting of the West by this point, it was the Western leaders who were surely thinking that this one was in the bag naively believing the naivety of Putin, of this I am certain even though Putin to this day will not admit it for reasons of political expediency.  If you don't believe me then take a look at my reasoning at the time and consider how it played out.  There is only one scenario that makes sense, and it makes a lot of sense.  I have elaborated in quite a bit of detail exactly what the plan was and also regularly reported on its success as well as regularly pointed out the failure of the Western leaders to come to terms with strategy that appeared, at least to me, to understand that success would not be possible unless key strategic Western hegemonies were disarmed of the financial and military weapons it possessed, so long as there was intent to do harm to Russia. Select the "Russia "or "Putin" labels below this post or follow the links I have embedded in this post, the important recent ones being here, here and here.

To this day the plan is still not grasped, even by the alternative media, judging by what I am hearing about "War of Attrition" as if it were only a battle tactic in the recent Ukraine vs Russia conflict which is really a proxy war Russia is waging against N.A.T.O.  Reasons for the slow Russian advance are analyzed in depth, they discuss how hard the ground is and the winter freeze, waiting for Ukraine's counter-offensives to run out of steam, the fact that they are focused on the Donbass for humanitarian reasons or the belief that Putin is secretly holding out for a peace deal.

All he is doing is demilitarizing NATO!

Let's be serious for a second here, Putin couldn't care a flying stuff about any peace agreement with any of these snakes in the grass, even if he ultimately enters into one, it will be against a background where Russia controls the variables that decide whether Ukraine ever become a threat again.  Trust, viewed as unrealistic by Putin, would not be required, so why would that be important?  Part of the reason for the invasion was to eliminate the need for trust and rather be in control of outcomes viewed by Russia as an existential threat. It's noteworthy that Putin does take seriously any pressure exerted by its allies, particularly BRICS nations, that is something to be mindful of, especially since the architecture of the new global payments system is something Putin spends far more time on than the war. Russia has the BRICS presidency this year and at the end of October in Kazan a summit is being held where vital technical discussions around global payments and security are to be ironed out.

Regarding the lead up to war, Putin observed the outsourcing of Western manufacturing to China and elsewhere, and he modernized the Russian MIC to ensure they were prepared to win in output of artillery in a race for escalatory dominance knowing Western stocks run on a "just in time" logistics and stockholding policy since their MIC is purely bottom line in structure.   He also has a very clear grasp of the political appetite for expensive wars on the voting public and know in Russia the population does not see defense at  war profiteering and support would only grow when engaging on military spending if it is to fortify Russia against her enemies.  His calculus of political damage, expense, threat posed by advanced N.A.T.O. weapons systems and the logistics/industry of war being able to produce and sustain

This was happening the whole time that Russia was trying work with his "partners" in the West, and it upset Russians he was using such terms for those trying to destroy him.  In the background do you not think the move to establish BRICS, stockpile gold, dump US Treasuries, corner the oil and gas markets by planning output with OPEC Nations like the Saudis, destroy the Petrodollar, provide support to Iran/ Africa/Syria/The Houti's etc. Make no mistake about it, survival meant disarming the aggressor.

Because once more the West is being played, it is the West that is STGILL BEING NEUTRALISED, disarmed of its weapons, artillery, its public appetite for war by Russia.  Putin knows the west has outsourced its manufacturing  

The perception among those paying attention is that with Putin at the helm the Russian Federation had done an about turn from the naive victim it was after the Cold War collapse. The Russians learned the hard way. Now they have outplayed the West in every arena. They outplayed the criminal plunder puppets who extort as much from their people as possible, eroding the manufacturing and industrial heart of the West with vulture capitalism fostered by the globalization of war, agriculture, syndicated media and finance. Putin has protected his economy from such vultures, invigorated its manufacturing base, tied its currency to energy and gold while ditching debt-based holdings of an increasingly suspect promise to pay, the USD treasury bonds. 

Russia has been a guiding light in the formation of BRICS providing the global South with a demonstration that resistance IS NOT futile and that we are stronger together. Militarily Russia is patient and has learned from the past. In the Ukraine proxy war, the entire NATO arsenal lies as a smoked ruin on the Ukraine countryside as the West turns its focus to aiding a genocide currently being committed by its ally Israel.  

Putin has not only defeated the West against all odds, but he has also done it while they tried to destroy him, somehow succeeding during that chaos to create the kind of trajectory the Western tax bandit globalist neoliberal cabal could only dream of.

They live in fear of being defeated despite holding all the cards only to have the man they demonized succeed at every aspect of their failure. There can be no defeat more comprehensive and no justice more in line with karmic sentiment than that.

And that backstory should allow the case to make itself.   The real reason the West hates Putin has nothing to do with freedom, democracy or prosperity because that is precisely what they have taken from the West, and no amount of projection will convince Russians otherwise, they believe their lying eyes and in a cultural quirk do not distinguish between projection and confession. All the data is transparent and clearly reflects my analysis as does everyday reality for every Russian I have spoken with. The demonizing of Putin is so far removed from reality, and it requires such overt and shameless lying that there was never any risk of it being taken seriously in Russia, and citizens were beginning to keep a keen eye the foreign affairs escapades of the US alphabet agencies and its department of state.
It was duly noted that the spy era rigor and excellence had vanished from the US intelligence community and armed forces.  The objectives of all discretionary spending on national budget issues was motivated by greed and corruption.  Without a peer competitor or threat, the vast resources dedicated to prevailing in the US/USSR contest of influence, all of those assets had to reassess their focus.  None were prepared to forfeit their funding and each would instead find new arenas to ply their covert strategy of classified operations.

What followed was an endless series of expensive, bloody insurgent or proxy wars or direct invasions.  They mainstream media at this point was also fully captured and persisted with its reporting of these wars as failures, ill thought out and executed with no apparent regard for any objectives, means to achieve them or exit strategies.  This is nonsense of course.  These wars were by far the most successful wars in history when seen through the lens of a criminal who has just removed all oversight, accountability and due process from the US Apparatus of state.  No short term victories, long and expensive, provide cover to covert black ops, enrich the MIC contractors, crush all free markets with sanctions, all democracy with globalization, all prosperity with austerity, all sovereign states with open border nightmares, all energy policies with IPCC pseudoscience, all health policies with mandates to make refusing state medication illegal and reclassifying your blood as the for-profit plaything of big pharma.  Russia by contrast has moved in the opposite direction.  Even Russian press have noticed this.

Despite the fact that there is no such thing as government money, only taxpayer money, civil servants in the US had transformed into a freshly emerged civil overclass.  Its former boss, the US taxpayer, was now but a minion and his money through a sense of megalomaniacal entitlement, would no longer be spent maintaining his roads or being invested in the future of national health or education.  Public spending policies would now be up for auction and each bill passed in Washington would be available to the highest bidder.  The polite term for such a system is a "lobby system" and in true Orwellian fashion conventional wisdom will explain how it is a system designed to give voice to the voiceless.  To make sure the little guy is heard.  In reality of course the opposite is true.

In short, despite the thirty years of reasoning I have given, in essence there is one major reason the West hates Putin: It is under his leadership that Russia has been on the opposite course of the West. That is what it comes down to. That is an almost scientifically rigorous way of cutting to the point.

Dramatic Shift in Global Power Balance

 


1) Turkey To Join BRICS

To understand the shifting sands of global power with regard to the rise of BRICS you can search this site or look for the tag "BRICS" going back several years.  The last post I made on this topic reflected some dramatic changes and is essential reading since the implications are tremendous and must be appreciated for what they are.

The inclusion of Turkey is just as significant, not for economic reasons but for geographical and military reasons.  Turkey has the second largest standing army in NATO after the US and houses some of the US nuclear weapons.  Turkey has been a NATO anchor and its trusted role regarding strategic weapons positioning has always been a factor since the drama of the Cuban missile crises where Turkey played a major role.   Since the defeat of NATO in the Ukraine proxy war in which the West has been waging against Russia, many have predicted the beginning of the end of the trans-Atlantic alliance, and this move surely signals that this is a reality that the next decade may present.  Furthermore, the potential for Turkey to host future Russian oil pipelines also gets a boost if European demand ever returns to Russia and soon the nation could be holding the EU hostage with its finger on both energy and refugee flow providing tremendous geopolitical leverage.

In terms of geopolitics there has been transformational change coming so quickly that it's difficult to assess the full implications, but once the dust settles, we will be very cognoscente of the fact that the Anglo-American dominated international climate is a totally different place where nothing is the way it used to be. The emerging powers of BRICS, lead by Russia, China, India and a host of new additions are determined to change the flavor of the "Rules Based Order"(a euphemism for US hegemony characterized by bullying, lies and a general lack of respect for the sovereignty of nations and the wellbeing of their citizens).  So far, the evidence shows that nations of the Global South and Middle East consider the diplomacy, basic manners and respects shown by the new power center to be a far more appealing option.

2) The Demise of the Petrodollar

In the next few days, the Petrodollar is up for renewal by the Saudis.  All signs point towards them not renewing it.  Here Here is a quick outline of the Petrodollar nuts and bolts along with a great little synopsis of its history. The reasons in their entirety are complex but simply put Saudi Arabia has moved into the BRICS sphere of influence and faced with the rise of other currencies being used for foreign trade it makes no sense to tie into one currency and only sell in USD.  Also, China has a 1.4 billion population, its growth prospects are tremendous, as are Indias.  Russia and Saudi Arabia can also work together to corner the global oil market, making OPEC somewhat redundant, and Russia has already stepped out of the dollar system, the nation has pioneered an oil for gold and oil for Rubles program using its own hydrocarbon reserves to protect its economy from US sanctions. For more on the Petrodollar you can click the "Petrodollar" tag or enter the word in the search bar. 

The drop in dollar demand is going to impact hugely on the US economy and affect the ability of the Anglo-American establishment to export inflation through the oil price in USD to the Global South.  Strap yourself in, we could be in for a bumpy ride!

Overturning the argument that the rate of increase in CO2 is a threat to life, using two quick Google searches.



*NB I do not subscribed to either of these "facts" neither do think petroleum or any  hydrocarbons are "fossil fuels". Those are irrelevant, the point is to highlight that the consensus science climate change agenda is easily exposed as nonsense even if only using consensus science itself. The bonus is that it won't get you censored (the downside is its usually wrong)
 

The US National Budget

 


A (FY) Federal Budget (FY=Fiscal Year - meaning govt revenue/tax related and projected for the year. The actual budget will always exceed these figures).

In order to best understand the black budget and nuances of spending I suggest first reading: 

https://dwahts.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-united-states-worlds-most-socialist.html

&


(FY) Budgets are usually far too conservative to be adhered to, even a record $4.829 trillion federal budget proposal which was made for fiscal year (FY) 2021 on Feb. 5, 2020.1 The U.S. government estimates it will receive $3.863 trillion in revenue, creating a $966 billion deficit for Oct. 1, 2020, through Sept. 30, 2021. 

The Congressional Budget Office predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic would raise the FY 2021 deficit to $2.1 trillion. The FY 2020 deficit will be $3.7 trillion.

Spending

Government spending is broken down into three categories: 

  • Mandatory spending, budgeted at $2.966 trillion; 
  • Discretionary spending, forecasted to be $1.485 trillion; and 
  • Interest on the national debt, estimated to be $378 billion. 

Each category of spending has different subcategories. 

The DEFICIT is the shortfall.

2021 in a nutshell
  • President Trump’s budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 totals $4.829 trillion, eclipsing all other previous budgets.
  • Mandatory expenditures, such as Social Security, Medicare, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program account for over 50% of the budget, but much of this is considered profiteering by pharmaceutical companies or goes to Wall Street under the pretence of "good investment" but in reality these are all vultures after their piece of the pie.
  • For FY 2021, budget expenditures exceed federal revenues by $966 billion.
  • Most of these revenues come from taxes and earnings from QE.
  • Case in point:  Obama doubled the National debt with the 2008 bailouts. DOUBLED. There is no public shareholding in the banks for this even though its actually the taxpayer that is on the hook for the debt plus interests. Only bank shareholders enjoy the profit, but the banks lost pensions, properties and savings of ours won't be repaid to us. Take and debt is for the little people, the peasants, almost all of us.

Revenue


The federal government estimates it will receive $3.863 trillion in revenue in FY 2021. Most of the revenue is in the form of taxes, paid by taxpayers, either through income or payroll taxes. The estimate for each type of revenue is as follows:1

The IRS and Fed were set up in the same year. Income tax on wage earners was never paid before then on wages, only on Capital Gains tax. There is still no law requiring US citizens to pay income tax, it is voluntary, but the cabal in power is an illegal criminal organisation the controls all branches of govt and courts, they will coerce and threaten us into paint income tax to fund the world most oligarchical

  • Income taxes contribute $1.932 trillion or 50% of total receipts.
  • Social Security, Medicare, and other payroll taxes add $1.373 trillion or 36%.
  • Corporate taxes supply $284 billion or 7%.
  • Excise taxes and tariffs contribute $141 billion or 4%.
  • Earnings from the Federal Reserve's holdings add $71 billion or 2%. Those are interest payments on the U.S. Treasury debt the Fed acquired through quantitative easing.
  • Estate taxes and other miscellaneous revenue supply the remaining 1%.

The U.S. Treasury must pay the interest on behalf of the people the bondholders brokered by the banksters to avoid a U.S. debt default. A debt default by the U.S. has unknown consequences since it has never happened before. The USD is global reserve currency, if treasury bondholders lost faith in the USD backing them the dollar would plummet, and further issuence of bonds will be almost impossible with no market to purchase them (as it already is)

Mandatory Spending


Mandatory spending is estimated at $2.966 trillion in FY 2021. This category includes entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment compensation. It also includes welfare programs such as Medicaid.

Social Security will be the biggest expense, budgeted at $1.151 trillion. It's followed by Medicare at $722 billion and Medicaid at $448 billion.

Social Security costs are currently 100% covered by payroll taxes and interest on investments. Until 2010, there was more coming into the Social Security Trust Fund than being paid out. Thanks to its investments, the Trust Fund is still running a surplus, a meaningless token gesture designed to create a perception of responsibility against the Trillion's the government of the US caters for allowing crooks to plunder  your ney

The Trust Fund’s Board estimates that Social Security's surplus will be depleted by 2034.3 Social Security revenue, from payroll taxes and interest earned, in fact it will cover only 79% of the benefits promised to retirees, but that's a stretch, bank on half.

Medicare is already underfunded because taxes withheld for the program don't pay for all benefits. Congress must use tax dollars to pay for a portion of it. Medicaid is 100% funded by the general fund, also known as "America's Checkbook." This account is used to finance daily activities and long-term operations of the government.4

Discretionary Spending

The discretionary budget for 2021 is $1.485 trillion.1 More than half goes toward military spending, including Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other defense-related departments. The rest must pay for all other domestic programs. The largest of these programs are Health and Human Services, Education, and Housing and Urban Development.

There also is the Overseas Contingency Operations fund that pays for needless wars to enrich contractors and their investors, funding rogue states like Israel or continuing military actions. A growing portion of the discretionary budget is set aside for disaster relief such as hurricane and wildfire relief 

Military Spending

Military spending is included in the budget under discretionary spending. The biggest expense for the military is the Department of Defense base budget, estimated at $636 billion.1

Overseas Contingency Operations are estimated to cost approximately $69 billion but in reality are far, FAR higher. It pays for the war OF terror costs triggered by the false flag psyop 9/11 attacks. These include ongoing costs from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Military spending is at least $700 billion itincludes $228 billion for defense-related departments. These include, spying on citizens, arresting whilsteblowers and tracing and bugginging you. Also includes Homeland Security, the State Department, and Veterans Affairs.

All these military costs combined equal $705 billion.

The Deficit

The budget deficit is estimated at $966 billion. That's the difference between $3.863 trillion in revenue and $4.829 trillion in spending. This shortfall is added to the existing national debt.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected in April that the budget deficit for 2021 would be about $2.1 trillion, assuming no additional changes to spending and revenues. The difference between the CBO projection and the Trump budget can be attributed mainly to the impact of the coronavirus fake pandemic. The CBO expects the real GDP to decrease by about 12% in the second quarter of 2020 and for unemployment to average about 14%.5  *That figure is a posture, since it does NOT include those no longer looking for work or unemployed over 6 months 

Each president and their administration is credited or blamed with increases in national debt due to the budgets their administration proposes. The approval of the budget is delegated to Congress. In other words, it's not the president alone who bears the burden of deficit creation and national debt generation, he's the fall guy.—other elected officials do so as well  tiny bit by making marking he

How the Deficit Contributes to the National Debt


Each year, the deficit adds to the U.S. debt. To raise funds to cover the deficit, the government issues securities such as Treasury notes, which are purchased by many investors. Japan and China are two countries whose governments have purchased large amounts of U.S. debt, in a manner of speaking owning the U.S. debt.6

An anticipated budget deficit can slow economic growth. It influences rising interest rates, as investors demand more return. Eventually, investors may become hesitant to purchase Treasury notes because they fear the U.S. government may not be able to repay the debt.

Budget Process

Congress created the budget process in 1974. The process is supposed to follow four steps:

  • The Executive Office of Management and Budget prepares the budget.7
  • The president submits it to Congress on or before the first Monday in February.
  • Congress responds with spending appropriation bills that go to the president by June 30.
  • The president has 10 days to reply.

Congress has followed the budget process only twice since creating the FY 2010 budget. Since that time, the process and deadlines within it have been ignored, due to political disagreements, posturing, and government inefficiencies.

The hard deadline for budget approval is September 30. If Congress doesn't approve it by then, the government can shut down. It did just that in 2013, in January 2018, and in December 2018. To avoid shutdowns, Congress usually passes continuing resolutions.8

If the government does shut down, it signals a complete breakdown in the budget creation process, or an attempt to appear as such to distract voters.

Where did all the bailout money go that is causing all this inflation due to expanding the currency supply? Not to you or I, it went to rich companies.

See HERE

Black Budget

The trillion dollar black budget is not covered here, but it must come from somewhere, I assert it is stolen from the American Taxpayer and the  victims of US wars of aggression where US funded rebels function as weapons transporters to the terrorists trained by black ops. Oil and Opium are just two examples of how off-budget dark programs get their funding.


NASA Budget Archive

 


NASA's budget for financial year (FY) 2020 is $22.6 billion.[1] It represents 0.48% of the $4.7 trillion the United States plans to spend in the fiscal year.[2]

This is as per Wikipedia.

This is a substantial decrease. Note the below:

NASA's budget as percentage of federal total, from 1958 to 2017


Since its inception, the United States has spent nearly US$650 billion (in nominal dollars) on NASA. When adjusted for inflation via the GDP deflator index the cumulative figure is closer to $1.19 trillion, an average of $19 billion per year over its entire history.

☑ Blockchain: The good, the bad and the ugly🔗

 






I get asked a lot to explain what blockchain and cryptocurrency are.
What are its benefits and risks? How will it affect us? Although it would
take a book to really explain in great detail all of this, I've put together
this short post in hopes that this helps somewhat. There is a lot more to
this tech, but it requires a lot of background understanding, but, at the
core is what is listed below.
Simply put, blockchain is basically a distributed database that cannot be
tampered with, and tokens (Bitcoin) are generated by this blockchain. It
is hacking and counterfeiting proof.
That's the super short description. Now, assuming we are talking about
Bitcoin and its blockchain, here are some of its properties.

 

Pros:                 
Bitcoin is decentralized, meaning it is not housed in one location.
Bitcoin does not have a central authority. No government or company
owns or runs it.
There is no central server; the bitcoin network is peer-to-peer, meaning
everyone can participate in the network.
There is no central storage; the bitcoin ledger is distributed.
The ledger is public; anybody can store it on their computer.
There is no single administrator, the ledger is maintained by a network
of equally privileged miners, that validate transactions.
Anybody can become a miner.
Any additional transaction blocks to the ledger are maintained through
competition. Until a new block is added to the ledger, it is not known
which miner will create the block.
The issuance of bitcoins is decentralized. They are issued as a reward
for the creation of a new block.
Anybody can create a new bitcoin address (a counterpart of a bank
account) without needing any approval.
Anybody can send a transaction to the network without needing any
approval; the network merely confirms that the transaction is legitimate.
Anonymity (or pseudo-anonymity) of a person is maintained on a
blockchain.

 

Definitions:            
Blockchain  
Public record-keeping book, database or ledger that
records transactions.
 
Block-blockchains  
Are broken up into blocks. Each block containing a
list of transaction made duringa time period and each block containg a
cryptographic key or hash of the previous block up to the genesis block
of the chain.
 
Nodes 
 Network of communicating nodes, or servers, running bitcoin
software maintains the blockchain.
 
Network nodes  
Can validate transactions and then add them to their
copy of the blockchain, and then broadcast these ledger additions to
other nodes every 10 mins.
 
Mining 
In order to determine randomly who gets to write a block to the
blockchain nodes or miners, do proof-of-work. This PoW requires miners
to find a number (or lottery) called a nonce.
 
Wallets 
Contains both private and public addresses for transactions,
which are like an email address and password.
 
Tokens
          Entries on blockchain that represent transactions and can be
traded.
 
Cryptocurrency  
Tokens traded as money.
 
Smart-Contracts 
Entries on blockchain that are programmable code
and that represent and behave as contracts.
 

Cons (Criticism):                
Forking debasement, meaning anyone can copy the blockchain code
and create their own blockchain and money.
Fraud at Exchanges, with crypto keys and funds easily stolen or
manipulated.
Mining pools controlled and manipulated by big tech and people with
money.
Energy consumption. The amount of energy needed to mine crypto is staggering!
Open-source developers need approval by programmers in order to
make changes by the people in charge of the project. Those that
approve can be corrupted and can add their own code.
Over 50% node attack can change ledger contents. This can happen if all
miners collude with each other.
Blockchains can be modified via forking with additional layers, much
like what happened to bitcoin in 2017 and when the Lightning Network
2nd layer protocol was added, that allowed the bypass of blockchain
consensus.
There are more... just to name a few.
 
There are institutional blockchains and variants I call hybrids. Here are
some of the features:
Hybrid systems blockchains are centralized.
Hybrid systems have central authorities.
Hybrid systems are not P2P and have central servers.
Hybrid systems storage is distributed only on centralized servers.
Hybrid systems storage is possible if you are a node, and nodes/servers
are housed in central locations and expensive.
Miners are servers/nodes and they can all be pooled, managed and
centralized.
There is no mining in Hybrid systems and if the node belongs to a bank
or any other central system.
In a hybrid system the centralized system is not obliged to use proof of
work for competition.
In Hybrid systems, they can mint as many coins as they wish anytime
they choose.
In Hybrid systems, you only get public address key (bank account) but
not the private key.
In hybrid systems, there may be a need to be approved or some contract
fulfillment before a transaction can take place and recorded.
In hybrid systems, there is no anonymity.
And then there is the big issue l have, is what happens to your
cryptocurrency if it is delisted from all exchanges, blocked at vending
machines and blocked by online merchants? Especially when the central
banks create their own version of crypto in a cashless society? 
Whata happens if the entire supply chain becomes digitally inaccessible to your
crypto?
Applications - such as human capital bonds.
Commoditization and tokenization of nature.
Tokenizing behavior such as workforce and educational space.
Buying and selling crypto as "gas" for smart-contract networks, such as
Al-as-a-Service (AaaS) that requires crypto ETH for fulfillment of Al used
in surveillance state operations and systems.
Again, these are just some of the pros, cons and concerns of
blockchains. There are many more, but it requires more discussion.

....end

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