Australia Planning New Naval Port For US To Counter China

A new report from Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reveals Australia is building a new naval port on its northern coast, near Darwin, able to support thousands of US Marines as part of Washington's efforts to counter rising China in the Eastern Hemisphere.

This comes at a time when Washington is falling into Thucydides Trap, referring to China, the rising power, challenging the US, the status quo, could one day lead to a shooting war somewhere in the heavily contested South China Sea and western Pacific waters.

The "secret plan" was revealed on Monday by ABC, which quoted multiple defense and government officials as saying the new naval port would be 25 miles from Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory. The exact location is at Glyde Point, a site with relatively deep-water access that will one day allow large warships to dock.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-25/australia-planning-new-naval-port-us-counter-china

Paul Singer Warns A 40% Market Crash Is Coming

Earlier today, in a stark reversal from its traditionally cheerful demeanor, a Goldman Sachs strategist warned that "purely based on elevated equity valuations, as measured by the S&P 500 Shiller P/E, and current growth, according to our US Current Activity Indicator (CAI), the risk of an equity drawdown of more than 10%", i.e. a sharp market drop, or for lack of a better word, crash, "is the highest since the GFC."

Well, Goldman wasn't the only one to see a major market selloff in the coming months.

Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, billionaire investor and Elliott Management founder, Paul Singer, warned that the global economy is heading toward a "significant market downturn" cautioning that "the global financial system is very much toward the risky end of the spectrum."

While Paul Singer's traditionally downcast outlook is hardly surprising, as it permeates every investor letter published by the successful investor who has been particularly clear in the past decade that the Fed's monetary experiment will end terribly, he sees two particular reasons why the economy is approaching a tipping point: "global debt is at an all-time high. Derivatives are at an all-time high and it took all of this monetary easing to get to where we are today and I don't think central bankers, or policymakers or academics are in any better shape to predict the next downturn and I think we are the high end of the risk spectrum."

He then ominously added that "I'm expecting the possibility of a significant market downturn."

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-27/paul-singer-warns-40-market-crash-coming

>>6861660

I can't see them being able to prop it up for much longer couple months tops IMO but suspect it may be coming down sooner than we think

>>6861751

Jr taking the piss kek

VA Whistleblower Threatened With Termination The Day Before Scheduled Testimony

One day before Minu Aghevli testified at a House committee hearing about official Department of Veterans Affairs misconduct, she received a thick packet of documents that shook her life.

It amounted to a pink slip more than 170 pages long, including about 140 pages outlining reasons VA plans to fire her, according to Kevin Owen, her lawyer. The packet arrived on Monday. She testified on Tuesday.

Aghevli, 42, is a District native who has spent her entire 20-year career with VA. She is a clinical psychologist with a department opioid treatment program in Baltimore.

But the moniker that matters now for her is VA whistleblower. Aghevli has made disclosures that she said led department officials to dismiss her, despite her Gold VA Pins for excellent customer service.

Aghevli’s allegations are serious. They include phony-wait-list assertions of the type that have bedeviled VA since it was consumed by a scandal that broke in 2014. She also accused department officials of lying to Congress.

“In order to reduce the wait list, I was instructed to improperly remove veterans from the electronic wait list by scheduling fake appointments for them in an imaginary clinic,” she told the House Veterans Affairs subcommittee on oversight and investigations.

“This clinic was not tied to any provider or location, nor did it actually correspond to any real visits. . . . The veterans scheduled for these fictitious appointments were not actually receiving VA care.” Aghevli said she protested and did not do as instructed.

Other actions to seemingly reduce the number of veterans awaiting care, she said, included coding indigent patients as “care no longer needed” without confirming that.

When lawmakers demanded information about VA wait lists in September 2015, she said, “the VA deliberately sent these incorrect numbers to Congress.”

The Office of Special Counsel has moved to block Aghevli’ s firing while it reviews her case. This special counsel protects federal whistleblowers and is not related a better-known special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who led a probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections.

Aghevli is not alone in making recent allegations about VA misconduct. At the House Veterans’ Affairs oversight and investigations subcommittee hearing, Chairman Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) said the panel is investigating secret-wait-list charges made in a Federal Insider column last month by Jereme Whiteman, VA’s national director of clinic practice management.

Only whistleblowers and their advocates testified at the hearing. Pappas said VA officials would be invited to a later session.

https://www.thedailysheeple.com/va-whistleblower-threatened-with-termination-the-day-before-scheduled-testimony/