Cucumber flowers for flower Friday

Did more unemployment insurance application stuff. So many feds have been fired that they have special, additional forms just for us. I don’t know if it is to make it more difficult or to track it or what but I am comforted to know I’m not the only one having massive anxiety and difficulty dealing. Not that I wish bad on anyone, I am just glad it is normal. 


The Russian Central Bank cut its key interest rate for the second time this year, from 20% to 18%. There are too many conflicting things for the governor of the bank, Elvira Nabiullina, to juggle. She hiked it up to deal with inflation and now she is reducing it to spur economic growth. This is why it matters that the US Federal Reserve System is independent of presidential whims. In Russia if Elvira doesn’t do what Putin wants, there are many windows she might accidentally fall out of. 

Russia has so trashed its workforce, by conscripting everyone who didn’t successfully flee the country, that it has begun searching globally for foreign laborers for manufacturing. They have an agreement with India for up to one million Indian workers.