Day 613
For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.
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Day 613
For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.
Day 612
Obama said "I will disappoint you. I will make mistakes." And now he has, according to the popular consensus, in condemning the improper arrest of a close friend. So today Obama will host the families of a Cambridge, Mass. cop and an esteemed Harvard professor of English literature at the White House, and try to bring "some measure of closure" to a controversy over appropriate presidential conduct.
Obama was correct in saying the Cambridge police officer acted "stupidly" in arresting a black man for talking back to him. Yet the very next day Obama apologized for that observation, and invited the cop and the prof to the Executive Mansion for a beer.
As a white man, I've had enough experience with power-happy peace officers to know the only safe response to abuse of power by someone with a gun, taser, billy club and knowledge of 50 infractions with which he or she can arrest you is to shut up and take it.
For a person of colour, multiply that by 100.
Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr., PhD, Harvard professor, recipient of a MacArthur fellowship and 16 honourary degrees, according to my Who's Who in America in which Sgt. James Crowley's name does not appear, should have kept his mouth shut. Just like that black film director did in Crash while his white wife was being body searched at length by a white cop intent on humiliating them both, because they drove a luxury SUV and he lived in a hovel.
Am I being elitist? You bet. Gates, also the author of five books and one of the world's leading experts on African and African-American culture, has worked extraordinarily hard to be treated with respect in the self-styled meritocracy that is the U.S. Sgt. Crowley has worked hard, but not enough, apparently, to have a sound grasp on dealing with delicate situations - which is his job, after all. And if a distinguished, world-renowned academic who is a close friend of the U.S. president can get pushed around in his own home, what chance of respect do I have? There's always a populist argument that we all should be treated equal. Actually, that's a value I live by. But when one of the most accomplished among us is subjected to arbitrary unfairness, you can imagine the fears I have for myself and those like me not equipped with deadly force.
We're told Obama should have kept silent when asked about the night-before arrest of Gates at a press conference on health care, should have let his friend go without his emotional support - maybe even be cast aside, as Rev. Wright was cast aside. Instead, this exceedingly careful speaker, who before last Nov. 4 routinely had trouble hailing a cab because of his skin colour, revealed his own anger. And in that moment the injustice of what King called "unearned suffering" found a voice in a very high place. And as Obama would have expected, judging from the occasional cynicism in his memoir, Americans are talking not of continued racial profiling - an everyday discomfort sometimes manifesting itself in evil acts - but about whether the U.S. president conducted himself appropriately in letting slip centuries of understandable rage.
Of Sgt. Crowley's credibility there is room for doubt, though he has been repeatedly lauded as an expert in racial profiling. In which case he might have thought more carefully about arresting a travel-fatigued black man for disorderly conduct - which is to say, for daring complain to the cop about an unwarranted intrusion into his home after the cop had established that this indeed was Gates's home. By Crowley's account, the 911 caller told him about "two black men with backpacks" she had seen trying to break into Gates' house. But by the 911 caller's account, backed up by a recording of her call, she said nothing of race. Her only words to Crowley were "I was the 911 caller." Crowley told her to stay put, and that was the extent of their exchange.
So one of Cambridge, Mass.'s finest, a fabulist to go by the police report he filed, has won himself an audience with the U.S. president, unrepentent still about his own conduct. A perverse outcome, to be sure. Would another president have acted with such goodwill and dignity? Would you?
I found instructive this Canadian commenter's experience, related in today's Globe:
"i'm white by race, with brown skin and beautiful kinky hair. I have been profiled as nonwhite my entire life by police, security at the airport or US Canadian border after the attacks of 911, etc. It isn't fun. It is humiliating, frustrating, angering, dehumanizing - period. Try it, you won't like it. Profiling is real, and disgusting. I was told for almost 2 years that I was "randomly selected" to be double checked at airports when flying to US or Canada every time I flew. I couldn't help but notice that ALL the guys 'randomly checked' were dark skinned. It sucks. Given my experience, give some slack to ANY black man in the US or elsewhere who gets upset or enraged at even the smell of profiling. If you are white, imagine living with it when you are just going about your business. You won't like it, believe me. As to the officer, he should know better since he is an expert in the field. He should have gotten the ID from Gates, said thank you, and walked out the door, thankful that he had helped to avoid a nasty situation that could, and often does, turn violent. He should not have used his power of the badge to get at the man in his own home. He knows about profiling and its effect, and should have put that knowledge to use."
And here's Gates, post-beer summit:
"Let me say that I thank God that I live in a country in which police officers put their lives at risk to protect us every day, and, more than ever, I’ve come to understand and appreciate their daily sacrifices on our behalf... And thank God that we have a President who can rise above the fray, bridge age-old differences and transform events such as this into a moment in the evolution of our society’s attitudes about race and difference...
"The national conversation over the past week about my arrest has been rowdy, not to say tumultuous and unruly. But we’ve learned that we can have our differences without demonizing one another. There’s reason to hope that many people have emerged with greater sympathy for the daily perils of policing, on the one hand, and for the genuine fears about racial profiling, on the other hand."
On the South Lawn at the White House, Vice-President Joe Biden, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Sgt. James Crowley and President Barack Obama exchange views, July 23, 2009.
For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.
Day 612
In the Washington tradition of turnstile politics, disgraced former U.S. senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) has re-emerged as a lobbyist for energy companies.
Recall that Craig was arrested in June 2007 at the Lindbergh terminal of the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport by an undercover cop in a sting operation following complaints the men's room was being used for sexual liasions. Craig's foot-tapping on the shoe of the cop, sitting in the next stall, led to the senator's arrest. Craig initially pleaded guilty but later tried to get the case dropped, claiming a "wide stance" when using the toilet. Craig declined to seek re-election, and dropped his appeal after the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled against him last December.
Craig resurfaced earlier this week as head of New West Strategies LLC, cofounded with Michael Ware, his senate chief of staff for 10 years. The law requires a two-year wait after leaving office before directly lobbying elected officials. But Craig and Ware can arrange what clients really want - access to powerful committee chairs and senior agency staff.
Craig's sterling credentials, extolled on his new website (http://www.newweststrategiesllc.com/), include his service on "several key committees" (aging, public lands, veterans affairs), which in fact are among the lowest-ranking committees on the Hill. Which is why most Americans had never heard of Larry Craig until he became a national punchline.
Closer to the truth is Craig's self-description as "a forceful advocate for conservative, common-sense solutions...[with] a reputation as a stalwart against environmental extremism." That is, Craig voted against measures to curb global heating, impose less environmentally harmful grazing practices, and other "extreme" environmental reforms.
Wrong on the environment, wrong on supporting the Bush agenda, wrong on appropriate venues to solicit adulterous relations. And thus qualified to join the ranks of K Street lobbyists advancing the interests of Big Business ahead of the public's.
The image at right is the proposed new international sign for bathroom-stall toe-tappers lobbying on behalf of oil and other energy corporations, as suggested by Seattle's Grist Magazine.
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Quote of the day
"Question: Why are there more flies in Cairo than lobbyists in Washington? Answer: Cairo got first choice." -Norman Augustine, CEO of defense contractor Martin Marietta, in Augustine's Laws.
For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.
Day 611
Jack Diamond's Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, home to the Canadian Opera Company and the National Ballet of Canada, has paid off for the Toronto architect with additional major commissions in St. Petersburg and Montreal.
Diamond's Toronto opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, is acclaimed for its acoustics and inviting facade.
Still prolific at 76, Diamond has just won an international competition for his Toronto firm, Diamond + Schmitt Architects, to design in St. Petersburg what he describes as "the first major opera house to be built [in Russia] since the czars."
Diamond won the commission, of course, with his proposed design for the new Mariinsky Theatre in the former Russian capital, But weighing heavily in his favour are the the acclaimed acoustics, functionality, ease of construction and relatively low cost of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, completed at a cost of $186 million.
The Mariinsky Theatre (left) has a much larger budget, of about $452 million, and is scheduled for completion in December 2011. Diamond and his local partner, KB ViPS Architects, won out over three Russian and one German finalist. The South Africa-born Diamond, who has made his home in Toronto since the 1960s, intends for the 2,000-seat Mariinsky to feature the same inviting glass front elevation of his University Avenue hall but with a masonry base and elaborate metal roof consistent with St. Petersburg's streetscape and topography.
"I hope it will be taken very positively in Canada, in the U.S. and certainly in my country," Valery Gergiev, artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre, told the Globe and Mail. "In a way, I hope this will be like a twin-cities behaviour, sharing cultural capital."
The coup is a reminder of how far Canadian architects have come since the days when sponsors of great buildings insisted on imported talent, as with the Ontario Legislature, designed by a Buffalo architect, and the King Edward Hotel, commissioned to a British designer. (The latter botched the job, which was completed by Toronto architect E.J. Lennox.)
The importance of major local commissions to Canadian architects has become apparent over the past few decades as Canadian designers have been thus propelled onto the world stage, and, in effect, becomie ambassadors of Canadian values and aesthetics. (Admittedly, the results have not always been pleasing, as with Carlos Ott's Brutalist Bastille Opera in Paris.)
The other Diamond project inspired by the Four Seasons is L'Addresse symphonique, a new, 1,900-seat home for the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, budgeted at $270 million with a 2011 completion date.
Diamond's buildings and works in progress have taken him to Manhattan, Washington, D.C., Bulgaria and Jerusalem (for the City Hall and the Israeli Foreign Ministry, above right).
But in a way Diamond is a quintessential Toronto designer, having by now built extensively enough to have shaped much of his adopted home's urban landscape. Alongside landmarks like Edmonton's Citadel Theatre are more discreet projects like Jessie's Centre for Teenagers on Parliament Street, a superb multi-functional pro bono project that the late June Callwood charmed Diamond into undertaking. There is the York University Student Centre, one of the few humanized spaces on that desolate campus, and bon bons like the mirthfully redesigned Museum TTC station with its elaborate mummies as column supports (left).
Diamond hasn't the ebullience of an Eb Zeidler or celebrity status of a Frank Gehry. Yet he remains busy transforming Toronto, for the better - when not called away to the precinct of the czars' Winter Palace.
For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.
Day 611
CBC said today Amanda Lang, recently defected from BNN, will this fall host a new afternoon business show on Newsworld and contribute to "The National." Congrats are in order to both, Lang for honing her skill at business and political analysis and quick-witted commentary, and the CBC for re-committing to comprehensive business coverage.
The Lang-hosted "SqueezePlay" on BNN was a fast-paced run through the hot topics of the day, unusual - and unusually useful - for its breadth of business and non-business coverage. And for its lack of parochialism. It understood that the EU, Samsung and Carlos Slim have relevance to a Canadian audience. There was a similar lack of cutesy items even NPR and CBC Radio can't resist.
The downside (there always is one) was snark, especially from occasional co-host Kevin O'Leary, a bazillionaire whom BNN permitted to use its network to showcase for his financial services sideline. O'Leary never actually shilled them. There was simply a constant undercurrent that he actually knew something about business because, hey, "I had nothing but misery with that stock." Hint, hint. An outrageous conflict of interest, which fell short of the sister Globe and Mail's high standards.
Lang has been at her best in stand-ups, like the Black trial in Chicago, when she has stuck to straight reporting. In hosting, she has a mastery of segues and the other devices for making the train run on time. But she couldn't resist episodic know-it-all snarkiness of her own, which the CBC will iron out of her. Someone there will explain to Lang, for instance, why she took "heat for suggesting 'swine flu' be renamed 'mexican flu," as she tweeted in April. "Why do I think the folks upset by this are the racist ones?" Oy. Maybe the first mention of mad cow disease as "mad Canadian disease" will help Lang find the answer.
By now Lang's been described so long and widely as a sex goddess - the Canadian counterpart to America's Maria "Money Honey" Bartiromo - she might have let a little of that fandom get to her. The CBC will fix that too, as it did with Wendy Mesley.
For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.
Day 611
Breaking news:
Microsoft has (finally) struck partnership with Yahoo, in assault on Google.
Microsoft this morning says it has reached agreement with search-engine rival Yahoo on a Internet search partnership, in a combination of the third- and second-largest search engines. Google would still have more market share than Microsoft-Yahoo. But with Microsoft's backing, long-troubled Yahoo would have R&D prowess to more ably take on Google. Microsoft's own new Bing search engine has gotten off to a fast start after a spring launch. Former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang was ousted after repulsing a $47.5-billion (U.S.) Microsoft offer for Yahoo. While not putting Yahoo up for sale, successor Carol Bartz, tech veteran who long headed Autodesk, lost no time signalling Yahoo wanted to resume talks with Microsoft. NYT has more here.
Flaherty, Yellen, only cautiously upbeat on economic recovery.
The Bank of Canada and the Fed last week gave pols the green light to lead a celebration of imminent economic turnaround. But Jim Flaherty, Canadian finance minister, and Janet Yellen, head of the San Francisco Fed, aren't breaking out the party hats.
"There are good signs that the economy has stabilized and that there are the beginnings of a recovery," Flaherty, pictured right, said Tuesday. But "we have to be careful," he said, vowing to continue Ottawa's economic stimulus program.
Yellen said yesterday she's seeing the "first solid signs" of an upturn. But the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, speaking in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, added that "recovery is likely to be painfully slow. A gradual recovery means that things won't feel very good for some time to come."
For May, Statscan reports that 1.6 million people were unemployed, with about 778,000 receiving EI benefits - the highest number receiving jobless benefits in 12 years. By a wide margin, Alberta, B.C. and Ontario are suffering the biggest jumps in EI claims.
The BofC says GDP will turn positive this quarter, some three months earlier than expected. But central bankers Carney and Bernanke, each also cautious, say it's too soon to risk raising interest rates.
Spike in Calgary, Edmonton jobless claims lead nation...
...but Alberta's unemployment rate remains far below the national average. Calgary leads Canada in year-over-year increase in number of workers on EI (+340 per cent), followed by Edmonton (+236 per cent). But the current 57,000 Albertans on unemployment rolls as the oil sector slumps is far less punishing than the 95,000 jobless claimants of 1983 when Alberta had a much smaller population.
"It's jumped up tremendously since last year," Todd Hirsch, senior economist at Calgary's ATB Financial, told the Edmonton Sun yesterday. "But it's because we were starting at such a ridiculously low level." Indeed, Alberta is still projecting a labour shortfall of 92,000 over the next decade as expansion of the Athabasca tar-sands megaprojects resumes.
In volte-face, GM rejects Magna's Opel bid. But we're still betting on a Magna win.
General Motors Co. yesterday rejected Magna's bid for GM's German-British automaker Opel-Vauxhall, now favouring rival bid by Belgium investment firm RHJ International. Stated reasons: Magna-led offer is more complicated (Magna, GM, Russian bank Sberbank and Opel workers would each have stakes in the restructured Adam Opel GmbH). And GM wants to retain existing partnerships with Russian automakers Avtovaz and Avtotor, which make Caddies and Chevs. But GM knew all that months ago...
Magna wants to use troubled Russian automaker OAO Gaz, controlled by Russian oligarch Oleg Derapaska, to make Opel line at Gaz's under-utilized plants and to exploit large Russian market, expected to see rapid growth post-recession.
Real reason for GM's cold feet re frontrunner Magna, experts speculate, is that having emerged so quickly from bankruptcy, an emboldened GM is seeking better terms for Opel. Indeed, GM may want to quickly regain full ownership of Opel from RHJ, a short-term speculative investor.
Trouble is, Germany, which already is financing Opel in restructuring and is called on to kick in still more billions of dollars in assistance, heavily favours the Magna deal, as do Britain (Vauxhall) and Opel's unions. So much so that Berlin says there will be no state assistance for RHJ as Opel owner.
As for GM's hopes of continuing to build and sell Caddies and Chevs in Russia (Stronach, pictured, has asked GM for the Russian Chev rights), Derapaska is almost a son to Putin. Putin already has publicly lauded the prospective Opel-Gaz link. At this writing, we'd still count on Berlin and the Kremlin to deliver Opel to Magna.
Washington, too. GM, now majority owned by Uncle Sam, doesn't want to risk further fraying of U.S-Russia relations. And the U.S-Canada bailout of GM is intended to revive its North American operations and protect the jobs of American and Canadian workers, not to enable GM to cling to its non-N.A. businesses.
N.A.'s most competitive newspaper market to get seventh daily.
English-language afternoon daily, that is, tentatively called t.o.night and distributed free at Toronto transit stops among other venues. Set for September 8 launch, and backed by St. Joseph (Toronto Life, et al) and Blackburn family (former owner London Free Press). Betting on status as only afternoon paper, t.o.night will compete with daily freebies Metro and 24 Hours and weekly freebies Now and Eye, along with Star, Globe and Mail, Sun, National Post, Italian and Chinese dailies and other ethnic press. Founder and B-school grad John Cameron, 24, sees t.o.night as commuters' planner for evening entertainment, "the last touch-point before they make these decisions." We see it lasting three months.
Corporate earnings pulse
Losers: Quarterly earnings sharply down at oil gaints BP and Talisman, while Valero posts a loss. (Exxon and Shell report tomorrow.) Losses posted at Torstar, Time Warner, Daimler, Atco, Industrial Alliance. Rogers profit warning. Winner: QLT profits up on sales of new cancer drug.
Commodities also hit: oil, gold, copper all down.
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Quote of the day
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." -Winston Churchill, Nov. 10, 1942, address at the annual banquet of the Lord Mayor of London.
For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.
Day 610
John Manley's days as a director of the bankrupt Nortel are winding down, of course. For about four years Manley and his fellow Nortel directors allowed Canada's longtime R&D flagship to glide into irrelevance and ultimately the grave.
With the same regularity that flamingos are spotted north of the tree line, the occasional independent director will lead a coup to replace a bad CEO. It happened at GM in the early 1990s. Otherwise, corporate directors are pylons. Manley conformed to that norm, shaking his head in disbelief as Nortel let one opportunity for salvation after another pass it by, and passed up his own opportunity to resign in disgust. (Colin Powell, pre-Iraq invasion, is the gold standard in that department.)
Manley's now turning over the sod for his own departure from public life, preparing for a stint as CEO of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. No one of influence pays the CCCE any heed, even its members. In a metaphysical sense it doesn't quite exist.
A sad end for a boy-scout pol given to un-Canadian bursts of patriotism.
But also a bungler, dissing the monarchy ahead of a royal visit. (I'm a republican too, but the timing, for a federal cabinet minister, was a bit off.) Easily bested by Gary Bettman in his fool's errand to repatriate NHL clubs. (Worthy cause, bumbling execution). A whiny, indecisive campaigner for the Grit leadership.
Post 9/11, Manley was easily panicked, urging a "North American perimeter" to block Canada off from the world and effectively merge it with the U.S. He cozied up to Tom Ridge, and possibly was alone in failing to grasp that Ridge's colour-code terrorism-warning gimmick was a production of the Warner Bros. cartoon studio. And he was a stooge for Harper in the PM's sop to Canadians alarmed by the Afghan quagmire, heading a panel that studied our military involvement there to no discernible effect.
Manley's now passing the time as a professional corporate director, at CIBC, the only Canadian bank gulled by purveyors of packaged subprimes. And at Nortel, where earlier this year he joined other directors in voting themselves compensation in cash rather than stock. That, of course, was a craven breach of the "alignment of management and directors with everyday shareholders" to which the corporate world pays only lip sevice. (The stock has, of course, since been delisted.)
Paul Wells of Maclean's, counting himself fortunate to score an interview with Manley at his Ontario cottage, blows a few air kisses John's way, letting Manley bemoan the sad state of Canadian technological prowess. "Innovate or perish," says the former industry minister whose triumphs in that portfolio escape us at the moment.
"The world is changing so quickly that the inability to find ways to adapt to the changing environment is detrimental, not only to the business sector, but to the country's prosperity as a whole. I don't think you could say that innovation is deeply in the DNA of our Canadian business enterprises."
Yadda, yadda. You've heard that Board of Trade speech too.
Oh, it's true that government outspends the private sector on R&D by a wide margin. It tends to be that way in a branch-plant economy like Canada. It's always been the idea in this neck of the woods to launch an enterprise, sell out to deep-pocketed foreign interests rather than risk taking the next big step, and retire to a sunny tax haven well stocked in Glenlivet.
Speaking of that crippling phenomenon, which oddly doesn't afflict most of our OECD rivals, Manley had his chance to help eradicate that curse at Nortel. But since his arrival there in 2004, Manley and his fellow directors instead presided over the soon-to-be-foreign-owned Nortel's demise. He helped appoint and over-compensate Nortel's last two, failed, CEOs. He joined in approving their inept conduct as they made pretty much every mistake one could in running a tech multinational. Recently, Manley delivered himself of a fulsome eulogy for the fallen tech giant in a Financial Post saga about that firm's gradual decomposition:.
“It is a huge loss for Canada and for our Canadian research and development...[I am] personally and deeply saddened by what’s happened. And I am heartsick about the impact on individuals. One of the things that always impressed me about Nortel is the loyalty that employees, and former employees, had toward the company. It is a tragedy.”
That was too much for Mark Evans, respected tech observer whose websites include a well-trafficked one devoted to "all things Nortel." Says Evans:
"With all due respect, shouldn’t Manley and his fellow board members be taking a healthy part of the blame for Nortel’s demise as opposed to lamenting how they are 'saddened' that Nortel has decided to concede defeat by selling all of its assets at firesale prices?...At the end of the day, Manley and his fellow corporate directors will have to take their share of the blame...If Manley was smart, he’d be wise to stay away from offering his condolences given he’s had a ringside seat to one of Canada’s biggest corporate declines."
Manley has made official his retirement from People To Take Seriously by accepting the post of CEO of the CCCE, formerly the Business Council on National Issues, and always the soapbox for the indefatigably pompous Tom D'Aquino, who invented himself and the BCNI pretty much in tandem. Someday we'll detail the raison d'etre of trade and vocational associations. Which roughly is to provide a shield behind which its not-ready-for-prime-time members can hide from public view, letting their polished front man experiment with eloquent pleas for special treatment crafted as appeals to the betterment of the commonweal.
There are but three priorities for business in its brushes with government: tax relief, abeyance from regulatory supervision, and having their gluttonous appetite for taxpayer handouts sated. The CCCE, overstocked with CEOs of branch plants, should be a good fit with Manley, given his U.S. sycophancy and eager identification with the aforementioned business priorities.
Which, again, is sad. Early on, that boy scout thing caught us with our hopes up.
[Ed.- Maybe that's our claim to fame. This is one of the few nations where managers of branch plants, like the head of General Motors of Canada Ltd., get to be called CEOs. When their tour of duty is up, they resurface at head office in Stuttgart or Cincinnati as vice-presidents of extruded monomer production, which, in the parent's global scheme of things, is actually a promotion.]
For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.
Day 610
Quote of the day
"Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you." -Satchel Paige
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