Grace notes

Around this time last year, I wrote about Mozart as "the poet of Spring" among composers, for his music's fluid transition among widely varying moods, like the winds of the season. Recently I've been gratified to acquire a two-CD set of exhilarating performances of Mozart's last four symphonies. It was released last year by Linn Records, and features the Scottish Chamber Orchestra led by Sir Charles Mackerras.

Mackerras has long been one of my favorite conductors for just about anything he turns his attention to. He isn't particularly a "big name" conductor, but that is probably because he lacks the facility or motivation for self-promotion of, for instance, a Bernstein or Karajan. He certainly is respected in the business, having done guest appearances on the podium with many of the world's top orchestras.

Sir Charles recorded the Mozart symphonies before, for Telarc in the '80s, and I still have a couple of those discs. Good as they are, this new release is in my perception a greater achievement.

It's always hard to define or describe something as subjective as a musical interpretation, but I'll try. Mackerras's way with these symphonies has the structural integrity of Otto Klemperer — the architecture is very clear — but with an added halo of warmth. (That may not be entirely fair to Klemperer, because of the difference in recording quality. Possibly if we could hear Klemperer's performances in excellent modern sound engineering, they would have more "bloom.")

Listening to this set, it's hard to doubt that Mackerras not only knows the scores thoroughly, which could go without saying, but that he has formed his own view of the musical meaning of every measure. Not only are the balances superb (such transparency!), but many phrases that never especially impressed me before yield up their secrets. Again and again listening to these readings, I found myself thinking, "Oh, so that's what that's about."

Sir Charles has an amazing gift for getting orchestras to characterize the music, not just play the notes. And while it's not unusual for other conductors to come up with bizarre interpretations of Mozart's tempo indications, here they seem to me spot on. Where Mozart says Andante ("walking"), we get Andante, not an Adagio or an Allegretto. There is, though, some flexibility of pulse within movements; I don't know whether they are indicated in the score or they are artistic choices, but they feel right.

Linn Records, based in Glasgow, is an offshoot of Linn, the maker of audiophile components. They first became famous for well-regarded turntables some 25 years ago, but they now offer a full line of high-end audio products. And boy do they know something about recording.

The SACD layer of these hybrid discs is a wonder. (I assume it's 5.1 channels; my system is five channels, lacking a subwoofer, but I sure didn't miss one, the bass being tight and solid through my front left and right Focal 705V speakers.) The space of the recording venue, listed as Glasgow City Halls, is perfectly captured, as are the instruments. I prefer a slightly less reverberant ambience, but that's a matter of taste, and the reverb doesn't smear the lines.

This is a remarkably natural recording, the opposite of that canned "mixing board" sound that you often hear on even releases from major classical labels … not that many of those are still with us. I guess I mean you, Deutsche Grammophon.

There are still superlative performances that can stand up to any in the past, and so much the better when recordings do them justice.

3/13 I have corrected a few misstatements that resulted from my memory playing tricks on me, and which were kindly pointed out by a commenter.

Minnesota state agency helps Muslims buy foreclosed homes

It may be the worst of times for Minnesota residents who are pitched out of their homes, but it's the best of times for Muslims who want to move in.

Something called the New Markets Mortgage Program has been devised to create sharia-compliant mortgages. Says the report in the Bismark Tribune, "The program is targeted at low-to-moderate income families." Sound familiar?

Needless to say, the story is positioned as a heart warmer. Nawawi Sheikh and his wife or wives had been stymied in trying to get a home loan. Just like millions of other people at the moment, but in Sheikh's case, it was because the Western world's finance system didn't fit with his politico-religious system. So the state created a special deal for him and his fellow sharia-compliant Muslims.

The program is the brainchild of Hussein Samatar, director of the African Development Center in Minneapolis. "The process is different, but the outcome will look the same," Samatar said. "We wanted to be as conventional as possible, while respecting the tenets of Islam.

Samatar, who used to work for Wells Fargo, tried for years to launch Islamic financing. He said the fact that Minnesota Housing has agreed to participate is a nod to the Muslim community's growing economic power.

The loans are underwritten by Devon Bank in Chicago. Using taxpayer bailout money?

Devon is one of the largest Islamic lenders in the country. Corporate Counsel David Loundy said he expects the demand for Islamic financing to grow as more Muslims make their home in the U.S.

Loundy said Muslims tend to be good risks. "If they worked so hard to get to this country, they don't want to screw it up now that they are here, so they tend to pay their debts pretty promptly," said Loundy.

Worked so hard to get into this country? The United States government is practically begging immigrants to settle in America, especially if they're temporarily minorities, especially if they're Muslim, in its drive for population replacement.

Nawawi Sheikh's new three-bedroom south Minneapolis home is a former foreclosure. The African Development Center's Hussein Samatar said there are thousands more potential buyers like Sheikh out there. He said the New Markets Mortgage Program will help the Minnesota Muslims community put down strong roots.

"It is great news for the country, and it really sends a great signal that the United States is our country," he said.

It will be soon enough, if Washington has its way.

3/11 From Fox News:

For several months the FBI has been investigating about a dozen Somali-American men who disappeared from their homes in the Minneapolis area late last year and may have joined terrorist groups overseas. One of the men, 27-year-old Shirwa Ahmed, later blew himself up in Somalia. The FBI recently called him the first U.S. citizen to carry out a suicide bombing, and FBI Director Mueller said he was "radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota."

Nawawi Sheikh, featured in the news story, is one of the beneficiaries of Minnesota's No Muslim Left Behind Act. He is a Somalian, excuse me, Somali-American. I do not say that he is a terrorist or that he has an explosive bone in his body. Who can know? They are always "moderate" Muslims until the day they become "extreme" Muslims. We can never sort them out in advance.

I do say it is insane to be inviting Somali Muslims to come live in this country.

We need no immigrants of any kind except a handful of those with some special expertise that cannot be duplicated by indigenous Americans. Beyond that, it is foolish to expect people from non-Western cultures who have a completely different set of values not to form enclaves and colonies of their own, contributing to a further fraying of the social fabric. Beyond that, we have to recognize that Islam is not "just another religion." It is a totalitarian worldview that allows for no alternatives except as a temporary expedient where it does not yet have the numbers to rule.

The government of Somalia has just voted to introduce sharia law. This is what Muslims do whenever and wherever they can. Why give them a foothold in the United States?

Obama's brain (dis)trust

From time to time I attend a stock discussion group at the public library. This morning was one of those times. The atmosphere was funereal.

I don't trust stock tips and advice, although they can be a useful starting point for further research. But I've gradually come to respect this group that gathers weekly. Most of them strike me as very sophisticated and smart investors drawn from an urban area that has more than its share of high-IQ people.

As far as I can tell, they are pragmatists, not ideologues. The gentleman who tries to see that the discussion follows a minimally orderly procedure is an Obama supporter, albeit not an idolatrous one.

The last couple of meetings I've been at had a simple theme: Does anything work now as an investment? For that matter, is your money safe in any investment? Today half an hour was spent talking about utilities for their supposed stability and yield. Nobody thought they were likely to make a shareholder much money. No one even thought they were necessarily safe.

"I can't believe we've come to this," said one fellow. "Here we are debating whether utilities, the classic widow-and-orphan stocks, are too dangerous to hold."

On the way out I found myself heading to the parking garage with one of the participants who had said emphatically that he thought the economy was so catastrophic that he couldn't bring himself to buy, period. He was firmly on the sidelines to watch the coming collapse. (Not everyone in the group had been that bearish, but there were no bulls.) I asked him why he was at a stock discussion group in that case.

Just habit, he said. He'd been reasonably confident until recently that he could game the market. He'd voted for Obama and was favorably impressed at first by the president's choices for his economic team. That was then -- four months ago, a geological age in the investment world. "They've blown it," he said.

An article in the New York Post -- no friend of Obama, so take it for what you think it's worth -- offered a view about why an apparently respectable batch of economic advisors that originally garnered Wall Street approval is now about as popular in the financial world as Hugo Chavez.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the former New York Fed chief, was supposed to have the experience needed to handle the banking crisis. Larry Summers, the head of the president's National Economic Council, was part of the brains behind the Clinton-era recovery. And Paul Volcker, chairman of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, helped save the free world back in the late 1970s and early '80s as chairman of the Federal Reserve when he squeezed inflation out of the economy and (along with President Ronald Reagan) helped return us to prosperity.

The disappointment on Geithner starts with the fact that, since taking the job at Treasury, he's failed to articulate a way to bail out the imploding banking system -- even though knowledge of the banking system's ills was supposed to be his strong suit. Worse, the word is that Geithner is still having trouble putting together a senior staff so he can come up with a bailout plan.

Thanks to all the class warfare produced by his boss, I'm told, Geithner can't find qualified people from Wall Street (the folks who know markets better than anyone else) to help solve the crisis. Instead, one saddened Obama supporter from Wall Street told me, "He's looking at a combination of bureaucrats and academics for these jobs."

Larry Summers? Everyone knows he's smart, but the word from Wall Streeters who are trying to pass him ideas for solving the banking crisis is that his ego's as large as his intellect. That is, they're finding him impossible to deal with.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment is Volcker, a true American hero who as Fed chairman tamed the stagflation of the '70s -- but seems to be muzzled at a time when the country needs him most.

I suspect that there is gladiatorial infighting behind the scenes because Obama doesn't want to hear what his crew is telling him. Geithner, Summers, Volcker -- and you can probably add Bernanke -- may or may not be the cream of financial gurus, and doubtless don't agree among themselves about everything, but they are pragmatists who honestly want to restore the system to health.

But does The Miracle Worker? Or is Obama such a Marxoid that he wants to see the American capitalist economy spool down until there's nothing left but for an all-powerful State to haul us into a central planning Valhalla?

That's, admittedly, speculation. Under most circumstances, I agree with the saying that you should not attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by ordinary incompetence. Perhaps the worst that can be said of Obama is what I have believed for months, viz., that he is a callow poseur with a lot of personal problems who has been elevated above his pay grade by a consortium of hard-left Democratic party grandees and criminals playing by Chicago Rules. It's not impossible he means well.

But the lack of a coherent rescue strategy, the switchbacks, the oracular messages from Obama's team (Geithner especially) sound like what organizations do when the people at the top are not all pointing true north. They try cover the policy fissures with empty rhetoric. Not everyone is as good at empty rhetoric as Obama, though. And investors, including battle-hardened professionals, won't -- can't -- settle for that. Not now, when their financial lives are hanging by a thread.

In a posting at Belmont Club on "The Obama Economy," a commenter who calls himself The Old Guy says:

It would be nice if some adults from the Democratic party showed up at the White House and told Obama to stop, its over. ... There are some nasty, vicious, self-serving pols ... who at some point may be willing to throw Obama under the bus in last-ditch self-defense.

Politics being what it is, and politicians what they are, it should surprise no one if soon Obama's enablers will suddenly not be at home to him.

Citi dump

Citigroup annual stockholders' meeting, 2009

As of this writing, shares of Citigroup are changing hands at $0.99.

A commenter at MarketWatch notes that share certificates are now available at dollar stores throughout the land.

Will the certificates will be worth something as collectibles on eBay, like the Enron code of ethics? Nah, wouldn't think so. There will be so many defunct corporate dinosaurs, Citi won't linger in anyone's memory bank for long. Besides, memory banks will no longer be eligible for bailouts once the national debt can no longer be sustained by the U.S. government contracting with every printing company on earth to create fiat money.

Tell me: if Citi actually zeroes out, do I still owe someone for the balance on my Citi credit cards?

UPDATE: A bright spark of a copyeditor at MarketWatch contributed this headline today:

"GE's CFO tries to talk investors off the ledge."

Nothing to declare

Baby panda
(obligatory attention-getting picture)

"Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent."
— Dionysius of Halicarnassus

He was a good head, was Dionysius, and what he advised still goes. Or, if you want a more modern source, consider the words of the famous Chilean-Finnish poet, José Käyttö-Näköislehden: "Your brain is bigger than your tongue for a reason."

Today I am full of thoughts on the disintegration of my country into a Soviet-inspired banana republic, a stock market that's fallen and can't get up, and many more subjects of great pith and moment. All of these thoughts are useless to anyone, including me.

Being pushed for time myself, I will not take up yours with piffle.

I know it's common wisdom among bloggers that if you don't come up with something new every day or thereabouts, your loyal readers will desert you for other outlets that provide more regular stimuli. If you imagine that reduced productivity at this site is a possible indication of alien abduction, so be it. That was a long time ago, actually. The past is another galaxy. They do things differently there.

So, no posting today when I have nothing to say, no strained humor and wordplay. It's a firm principle. Here I stand, I can do no other.

Except … well, I declare! It occurs to me that I have just wasted your time with a post about nothing.

What can I do to make it up to you? Only humbly apologize to anyone still reading this ridiculous posting (you know who you are).

Oh no! I have just wasted more of your time by apologizing!

I'm sorry about that, too.

Blimey O'Riley, I've just done it again! How do I get out of this cycle?

And yet again —

Thanks. I needed that slap.

Scotland the formerly brave

In Scotland, Muslim victims of crime get priority over other crime victims. (Tip of the hat: Gates of Vienna)

... A senior officer revealed that the race and religion of a victim has now become a crucial factor in how police respond to crime.

Inspector Tom Galbraith, of Lothian and Borders Police’s diversity unit, told a conference on tackling terrorism that it was important to stop Scottish Muslims feeling “vulnerable” in case they were driven towards radicalism.

No one seems to have considered that Muslims might be driven towards radicalism by observing a weak society's favoritism toward them and signals that law enforcement will be bent in their favor. To anyone with inclinations toward jihad, the lesson is obvious: these Scottish infidels are pushovers. They want to be dhimmis. We can accommodate them.

Is the spirit of Robert the Bruce and Rob Roy MacGregor dead in Scotland, or only among Scotland's quisling politicians?

Speaking at a national security conference in Edinburgh on Thursday, Mr. Galbraith said, “It is not about treating everybody the same. If I have a young Asian man who has been subjected to a hate crime, I would rather put more resources into that than if it had happened to a white male because the white male is far less likely to end up becoming radicalised.”

Oh, aye? We'll see, laddie.