Euro bank chairman predicts U.S. "financial meltdown"

The chairman of Fortis, a major Dutch-Belgian bank, has predicted a "complete collapse" of the U.S. financial markets within weeks.

As translated from the news article in Dutch by Jesse's Café Américain:

Fortis expects a complete collapse of the US financial markets within a few weeks. That explains, according to Fortis, the series of actions by the bank of last Thursday to raise €8 billion. "We have been saved just in time. The situation in the US is much worse than we had thought", says Fortis chairman Maurice Lippens. Fortis expects bankruptcies amongst 6000 American banks which have a small coverage currently. But also with Citigroup, General Motors, a complete meltdown in the US is beginning."

As Jesse notes, Fortis may have its own reasons for this, er, fortissimo prediction. No one commenting on economics is ever purely disinterested and objective. Still, holy cow! That the board chairman of a big bank would make such an extreme statement for public consumption suggests how far into the danger zone the U.S. economy may have strayed.

Interestingly, today's Wall Street Journal carries an article about Fortis's casting the net for billions of Euros of new capital, but says nothing about the "financial meltdown" statement. A quick check of MarketWatch.com and TheStreet.com finds not a breath of it. What happens in Amsterdam, stays in Amsterdam?

Fear clearly grips the hearts of institutional investors, as shown by last week's market carnage. God alone, other than those involved, knows what is being said behind closed doors at the Fed and in bank boardrooms. With the housing collapse, an oncoming credit collapse, $140 oil, and the unstoppable financial suction pump of Iraq, it would be surprising if there isn't an extra helping of suppressed panic on many plates this morning.

Would you like a taste of pure nausea? Let's call again on financial newsletter writer (yes, he has his own vested interest) Jim Willie:

The stage is set for the next two to four months for a broader banking system deterioration, most likely the bankrupt collapse of a few big banks, and a good chance of lost control of portions of the credit derivative complex. A big broad powerful liquidation sequence is coming soon for the biggest of bloated money center and investment banks. They have tried in vain to sell most of their overpriced mortgage bonds and related financial securities. They cannot find truly stupid parties anymore to buy them. …

Goldman Sachs on Thursday downgraded Citigroup with a short stock recommendation. Why would they do that? They put Citi on their ‘Americas Conviction Sell’ list, which just has to evoke laughter for its name. They expect another gigantic bond loss to be admitted by Citi, more cash to be raised as they sell capital and undermine stock equity value, and even more dividend cuts. Up to May, the total amount of cash they raised by selling off capital to foreign entities was a robust $42 billion, thus undermining US control of the biggest US bank. …

The smart guys out there have figured out the helpless and desperate situation that the USFed finds itself. It cannot raise rates, since that would harm the stock market, further cripple the mortgage and housing markets, and worsen the rapidly advancing USEconomic recession. Sure, it needs to raise rates in order to defend the USDollar, but the US$ is not defensible. It has been totally ruined by three decades of mismanagement, corruption, pork projects, sacred war budgets, socialist programs like Medicare, and reckless creation of bubbles in serial fashion.

I am in no position to know the ratio of truth to hot air in the above, but he is by no means the only commentator in the non-Establishment or "alternative" financial media who is talking like this. It seems like only common sense to get very defensive with your investments — precious metals, commodities, companies with a good secure dividend, perhaps a few strong currencies if you can find any. While the Senile Media are babbling on about the electoral contest between the False Messiah and the Masked Crackpot, the economy is probably far more important at the moment. If you haven't started performing your own due diligence, what are you waiting for?

Garamantians

Above the Nasamonians, towards the south, in the district where the wild beasts abound, dwell the Garamantians, who avoid all society or intercourse with their fellow-men, have no weapons of war, and do not know how to defend themselves.

— Herodotus, The Persian Wars, Book IV.174

Even the BBC headlined this story "Harman pushes discrimination plan."

Equality minister Harriet Harman has set out plans to allow firms to discriminate in favour of female and ethnic minority job candidates. She said firms should be able to choose a woman over a man of equal ability if they wanted to - or vice versa. … Allowing positive discrimination would help organisations such as the police better reflect the communities they serve by recruiting more female and ethnic minority officers, said Ms Harman.

For the moment, you are still free in Britain to make consumer choices like what brand of breakfast cereal to consume. If you are very wealthy you can still be treated by a doctor in private practice, but most people will have their lives prolonged, or not, by a dysfunctional National Health Service. Otherwise, almost every detail of your life will be guided by regulations or "recommendations" of the State — nowadays, not even a British one, but the European Union.

In Scotland, your employer is "encouraged" to monitor your weight.

Workers will type in their weight every morning – using Government-provided software – allowing occupational health staff to spot significant weight gain and offer early help, under the scheme unveiled by ministers.

If you are a grocery wholesalers, you can be banned from selling (or even giving away) a consignment of 5,000 kiwi fruits because they are one millimeter too small to meet EU regulations.

Your every twitch in public places will be recorded on CCTV cameras.

Citizens in the modern West — especially if their ancestors were foolish enough to be Anglo-Saxon or Celtic — seem to me more and more to resemble the Garamantians of the fifth century B.C. in Libya that Herodotus wrote about.

Their brains have been undeveloped by education whose standards are set abysmally low so no stupid child can fail, and atrophied by sex- and celebrity-obsessed media, so they have no social life worthy of the name because they have nothing to talk about. They have no weapons because that's not nice, and anyway, there are no enemies, just friends who don't understand them yet.

They are too naive to defend themselves against human predators. They are helpless against their own rulers who tell them that all the restrictions they live under are for their own good and exist to make everybody equal, except those unprotected classes who don't deserve equality because they're natural born oppressors.

We don't know anything more about the Garamantians than what Herodotus tells us, and he is famously not to be trusted as a historical source (although I think he made a sincere effort to tell fact from fiction, but had to rely a lot on hearsay). There is one thing we do know about the Garamantians, however.

They no longer exist.

Detroit puts tailfins on its art museum

It's an un-themed, de-contextualized thing.
You wouldn't understand.

I'm a little late with this, but it's about art, and we all know art is timeless.

The Detroit Institute of Arts has made the "visitor experience more interactive" and "re-contextualized" its artworks on display. Translation from arts manager jargon: the museum has been dumbed down to draw more bodies through the turnstiles.

Though ultimately a renovation of necessity, the new design shakes up the standard art-going experience, allowing visitors to forge a more personal connection with the works. "We've re-contextualized the works of art so they relate directly to the human experience," [gallery director] Beal said. "We're not trying to teach people art history." … The galleries, now easily accessible from what Beal calls a "main street" running through the institute, display themes to which visitors can relate, such as dining, travel and the cycles of life.

Excuse me? This wally doesn't think art relates to the human experience unless he and his mob of downshifting curators turns the "context" into a theme park? Well, he's apparently got his finger on the pulse of our times. The Washington Post, that great Voice of the People, is down with the new coolness.

DON'T MISS . . . several new interactive elements, such as a "virtual" dining room set up in a space surrounded by 18th-century European serving pieces and featuring a five-minute video simulating a lavish three-course meal. (No elbows on the virtual table, please.) . . . For the younger set, kid-friendly opportunities include "Please Touch" labels on various pieces, such as ivory and glass beads in the African collection, and "Eye Spy" panels that challenge tykes to find specific pieces of art in the gallery.

Why waste space on actual art when virtual reality is so much more fun? It's stupid to hang old paintings — I assume the museum still has a few of those — when you could put them on video monitors attached to computers, so the kids of all ages could re-pixelize the images to their hearts' content. How about big loudspeakers in each gallery to pound out hip-hop and disco? That's something Detroiters can relate to!

And, in fact, they did.

Connoisseurs at the opening reception for the
newly themed Detroit Institute of Arts.

Here's The Detroit News on the museum's re-opening gala:

Bodhisattva is a 1,600-year-old Afghan bust who lives at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

And on this Saturday night, she's got a clear view from her balcony above Prentis Court of the flashing lights on the DJ booth below and dozens of Detroit swells waiting to be tattooed by the cable-TV "Miami Ink" artist, Chris Nunez. Playing at the moment is the disco crowd pleaser, "Le Freak."

It's all a bit un-museum-like. Frankly? Bodhisattva looks appalled. If so, however, she's the only one.

Uh, not quite.

For discriminating tastes

Take 35 Acts, 52 statutory instruments, 32 codes of practice and 16 EC directives — 116 pieces in all covering 4,000 pages — put them together, and what have you got? Britain's anti-discrimination legislation.

If laid end to end, the Equality and Human Rights Commission points out, that would be the length of ten football pitches or height of 243 double-decker buses. It would take about two-and-a-half days and two nights to read all the documents. … There are three different definitions of direct discrimination and four of indirect discrimination.

For the British citizen who doesn't want to fall afoul of the law but is feeling a bit pushed for time, help is at hand.

This week Harriet Harman, Minister for Women and Equality, will unveil ministers’ plans for a single Equality Bill, bringing together all the legislation on discrimination of the past 35 years — pay, race, disability — and also age and gender orientation. It is not just a tidying-up Bill. It is hoped that it will create a culture where discrimination on grounds of age, along with disability, religion or sexual orientation, are all on a par with race or sex discrimination.

I can't wait to find out if it will still be legal to get married in the United Kingdom. After all, that is the most discriminatory act of all. In choosing one person for a spouse, you are rejecting the entire universe of members of either sex, not to mention species. Can't get more discriminatory than that! And what excuse can you offer when you are brought before the scowling, bewigged figure looming above you at the bench?

"You are charged with an offence under the Combined Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, which reads, in its entirety, 'On no account will anyone discriminate against any other person, group, or entity on any basis whatever.' How do you plead?"

A spokesman for the commission said: “This is not just about ‘fixing’ minorities. This is about releasing new talent and opening up the job market in previously untapped areas.

“In two years,” she added, “just 20 per cent of the workforce will be made up of white, able-bodied men in full-time work. We must unlock the diverse talent that will be our future workforce. Modern legislation has a valuable role to play in setting the standard, making safe the principles of fairness and decent behaviour for employer to employee.” A new Act, the commission hopes, will move from prohibition (“you must not”) to permission (“you may”) and to positive encouragement (“you should”).

If you don't understand what is meant by "positive encouragement" … you should.

Up to a point

If I lived in Canada, I could be summoned before a so-called Human Rights Commission and charged with a hate crime for writing on this blog that allowing members of the world's largest intolerant group to immigrate to my country is a bad idea. At best, I would be forced to spend thousands of dollars to defend myself from expressing a political idea; at worst, I would be convicted by the commission — not a court with even such protections as the Canadian legal system allows — and have to pay more thousands of dollars to my accusers. The Toronto Star, which bills itself as Canada's largest daily newspaper, yesterday published an opinion column by Haroon Siddiqui that explains why I and writers like me should be put in the dock for failing to observe a "reasonable limit" on free speech.

Only genuine misunderstanding or deliberate distortion can explain the media's mostly one-sided discourse on the case of Maclean's before the federal, as well as the Ontario and British Columbia, human rights commissions. The group that filed the complaint against the magazine argued that a series of articles, especially a 4,800-word piece portraying Muslims as a menace to the West, may have constituted hate speech.

The now-famous article was, of course, the excerpt from Mark Steyn's book America Alone. Agree or disagree that Islam is a menace to the West, that is a matter of political opinion, and actually pretty mild compared with what many say or privately think. Steyn, like that other halfway house of anti-jihad inspiration, Melanie Phillips, can't even find it in himself to suggest that the West would save itself from a spot of bother by calling time out on Muslim immigration. Much less has he (or I, or any blogger I read) recommended harming a single hair on the head of any Muslim outside of a war zone or by the due process of law.

Nonetheless, Canada and Siddiqui maintain that saying Islam — which has as its heart an absolute loyalty to shari'a law over any other manmade law — is a threat to a supposedly free and pluralistic country may be "hate speech." If you need any evidence that Islam cannot accept criticism, cannot understand the give-and-take of an open society, there is Exhibit A.

Canada has followed a different path on free speech than the United States, where there are no anti-hate laws because the U.S. Bill of Rights says "Congress shall make no laws ... abridging freedom of speech or of the press. The Canadian Charter of Rights, too, guarantees "freedom of the press," but it places "reasonable limits" on it. That's why the Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the anti-hate provisions of both the Criminal Code and human rights statutes. What constitutes hate is up to the commissions and, ultimately, the courts to decide.

That's exactly what gives some of us the chills. The definition of "hate speech" is what these commissions decide it is … after the fact. (The U.S. Constitution also prohibits ex post facto laws.) As for the courts, they don't seem to be in the checks-and-balances business. Of 15 "hate crime" judgments, 15 have been upheld. By Siddiqui's circular reasoning, the "anti-hate" laws are right because the Supreme Court of Canada says they're right.

Barbara Hall, chair of the Ontario commission, makes the … point: "Freedom of expression is not the only right in the Charter. There is a full set of rights accorded to all members of our society, including freedom from discrimination ... If you want to stand up and defend the right to freedom of expression, then you must be willing to do the same for the right to freedom from discrimination."

In this warped mindscape, questioning the political implications of someone's beliefs is "discrimination." Canada has freedom of expression — "Up to a point, Lord Copper," as the fawning editor in Evelyn Waugh's Scoop invariably says to his fearsome publisher when he means "no."

Ms. Hall, you are not fit to pronounce on freedom of expression, nor to judge anyone's use of it. I dare you to step across the border and sue me for discrimination. Or hate speech. Or not bowing low enough.

UPDATE 6/24: Writing the above post in haste (posthaste, ha ha!), I was not as clear as I would like to have been. The Canadian "hate speech" laws are not strictly ex post facto, having existed before the alleged offenses. But the effect is almost the same, since their application turns on a tribunal's or court's interpretation. Unlike laws against actions, which can be fairly specific, laws against speech or writing must by their nature be vague and ambiguous because they are about the effect on the "victim," which can be no more than a feeling. So the tribunal or court is weighing intangibles, which can easily be decided on political grounds.

UPDATE 6/25: Another province of the Islamic Republic of Canadastan heard from. This time it's a column in The Ottawa Citizen, to remind us again that "free speech has limits."

Faced with such content, a group of Muslim law students did what most citizens of a democratic society would do. … They demanded a response and Maclean's editors refused to publish one. Since Maclean's does not subscribe to a press council, they then did what a number of other communities, including the aboriginal, black, Jewish, and gay and lesbian communities have already done.

Namely, called for a NuStalinist show trial of Macleans and Steyn. I don't know what a Canadian press council is, although it sounds like something I'd steer well clear of, but it might be of interest to this columnist to know that a publication like Macleans is a private enterprise (or what passes for one in Canada), which no one is forced to read, and which is under no obligation to publish a response from anyone who happens to disagree with something it prints. That's what publications with different viewpoints — freedom of the press, if the Canadian Human Rights Commission and its running dogs will forgive the expression — are for.

Here's something I hadn't run across before: "The definition of 'hatred' applied by the tribunal was formulated by the Supreme Court of Canada in a 1990 case: a feeling of deep ill-will that allows for no redeeming quality in the targeted group." So if I write in Canada that Islam is deeply incompatible with Western society, and a politico-religious system with an inordinate number of members who dismember members of other faiths, but there are some quite beautiful arabesque tiles from the 14th century and splendid calligraphic versions of the Qu'ran from the same period, I cannot be brought up on charges? I'd offer myself as a test case, but I prefer on balance to enjoy such protections as the United States still grudgingly provides its citizens.

Future schlock

This architect-as-rock-star lark has gone too far.

In 50 years, we've moved from the buttoned-down, "less is more and even less is even more" school of building design, through the wink-nudge postmodernist period to arrive at the "too much isn't enough" school. These architect wallahs and their misguided clients are in a bidding war for the most bizarro concept.

Guy de Maupassant is said to have lunched every day in the Eiffel Tower's restaurant because it was the only place in the city where he wouldn't have to look at the tower. Whoever gave planning permission for the structure pictured above obviously feels that a century hence Chicagoans will thrill to it as Parisians do to the Eiffel Tower today. (Do they really? Or is it just tourists who love it because it reassures them that, yes, they really are in Paris?)

Anyway, the thing in the picture will be the second-tallest building in the world (for a year or two, probably) when completed in 2011. (Tip of the hat to Ephemeral Isle.)

Londoners have nicknamed one of the city's wilder new skyscrapers "the Gherkin." Any guesses as to what Chicagoans will call their modest new addition to the skyline? "La Baguette"? "The Screw You Building"? "The Joint"? "The Twister"? Maybe they could paint candy stripes on it so it could be known as "The Peppermint Twist Building." We are Chicago, City of Broad Shoulders, and We Will Never Be Understated!

Once, unthinkable eons ago — a hundred years — there was something called classicism in architecture. The reigning idea was that a building should express a continuity with the past of Western civilization, and that it should not unduly call attention to itself, in the way that a gentleman does not raise his voice. That was then, this is now, when the only continuity our architects of ego-eyed vision know how to express is with the future as imagined in video games, and their only tone is a shout. Maybe one day not far off, when the historic record has vanished from human minds and exists only as bytes in obscure computer files, Chicagoans will love their by-then world's 25th-tallest building.