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Economics

The unsteady comeback of the California condor

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IT MAY HAVE been the smelliest job in conservation. Whoever drew the short straw sat in a hole in the dirt underneath a carcass. Then they waited for a California condor to come and have a snack. “That’s not a pretty job at all,” says Chandra David, an animal keeper for the Los Angeles Zoo. “When a bird would land somebody would radio in saying ‘Now!’ and they would reach up and grab the bird’s legs.” This, and other less nauseating methods, is how the last remaining condors were brought in from the wild in the 1980s.

Economics

Is it ever right to pay disabled workers pennies per hour?

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IN A SMALL building on Hi Hope Lane, Jeffrey Pennington sits at a desk packing ten-piece sets of zip ties. A diagram on a piece of paper helps him count before he drops the ties into a resealable bag and begins again. Mr Pennington, who has Down’s syndrome and autism and struggles to speak, once dreamed of waiting tables at Wendy’s, a fast-food joint. Today he is one of 77 disabled people working in “the shop” at Creative Enterprises, a Georgia non-profit. Mr Pennington and his co-workers assemble allergy-test and home-repair kits for big companies. Each week Mr Pennington proudly takes home a pay cheque, but after about ten hours’ work it amounts to only about $3.00.

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Economics

How (and why) J.D. Vance does it

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The safe choice for vice-president was not J.D. Vance. He arrived on Donald Trump’s presidential ticket with little political experience and plenty of baggage. During his two years in the Senate some senior colleagues found the Ohio freshman’s strident opposition to Republican policy orthodoxy presumptuous. And more than a few Republican lawmakers and donors still privately acknowledge they would have preferred someone else. Yet the vice-president, the third-youngest in American history, has proved adept at a role that often ends up as a political dead end. And Mr Vance, seen by America’s allies as a divisive figure, is casting himself as a uniter of his party’s fractious factions. He argues that he was uniquely placed to bridge the gap between the “techno-optimist” and “populist right” MAGA tribes.

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Economics

Mohamed El-Erian says Trump tariffs risk US recession

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Mohamed Aly El-Erian, chief economic advisor for Allianz SE. 

Bloomberg | Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s extensive raft of import tariffs are putting the U.S. economy at risk of recession, Allianz’s Chief Economic Advisor Mohamed El-Erian warned on Friday.

He added that Trump’s swathe of so-called reciprocal tariffs could have a significant effect on the global economy.

“You’ve had a major repricing of growth prospects, with a recession in the U.S. going up to 50% probability, you’ve seen an increase in inflation expectations, up to 3.5%,” he told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro on the sidelines of the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy.

“I don’t think [a U.S. recession] is inevitable because the structure of the economy is so strong, but the risk has become uncomfortably high.”

El-Erian also warned that markets were underestimating the inflation impact of the tariffs regime.

“The first reaction has been concerns about growth. We haven’t had two other reactions yet: what will happen to growth in other countries, and that makes a question mark on whether the dollar weakness will continue, and then what does the [Federal Reserve] do?” he questioned.

“I think if we’re lucky we’ll get one rate cut, not four, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we get none,” El-Erian added.

“If it’s a normal Fed — and I say this qualification with a lot of emphasis, because this has not been a normal Fed — we would unlikely to get even one rate cut.”

This developing story is being updated.

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