Desktop freezes on background change

Symptoms:

1. Freezing happen spontaneously, ca once per 20 background changes, at exactly the moment the background changes.
2. No screen update under the graphical terminal.
3. I can still switch between virtual terminals with Alt+Ctrl+Fx
4. All applications still work; music plays, and I can still interact with running applications, like VirtualBox (if it is currently running). I didn't test xdotool and wmctrl
5. Mouse cursor icon is visible and you can control it with the mouse. Clicks are ignored.
6. Mouse cursor icon changes while hovering under different zones of windows drawn on the screen, just like it would if the system was working normally.
7. It looks like the keyboard is ignored too; except for Ctrl+Alt+Backspace (if a correct script is loaded which intercepts this key combination). Ctrl+Alt+T (to display terminal), Alt + F2 (to show "Run command..." dialog) are ignored.
8. On the .xsession-errors you can see

(cinnamon:2528): Clutter-CRITICAL **: clutter_actor_queue_relayout: assertion 'CLUTTER_IS_ACTOR (self)' failed
No such schema 'com.canonical.unity-greeter'
Window manager warning: Window 0x5000051 (Open Datab) sets an MWM hint indicating it isn't resizable, but sets min size 104 x 1 and max size 486 x 228; this doesn't make much sense.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x5000051 (Open Datab)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x5000051 (Open Datab)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x5000015 (Database f)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
Window manager warning: Window 0x50004b7 (Edit Entry) sets an MWM hint indicating it isn't resizable, but sets min size 104 x 1 and max size 568 x 523; this doesn't make much sense.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x50004b7 (Edit Entry)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x50004b7 (Edit Entry)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x5000015 (Database f)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
No such schema 'com.canonical.unity-greeter'

System affected:
Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon 64 bit. Confirmed on two independent machines using this system.

System unaffected:
Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon 64 bit.

How to reproduce:

1. Install the Linux Mint 16 with Cinnamon 2.0 64 bit
2. Install a program that changes wallpaper (tested on variety, and wallch) and set it to start changing wallpaper as the background task.
3. Wait for background to change several times. The bug doesn't kick in on the first background change, you need to wait a moment.