Last week I inherited a new button collection. A dead lady's buttons to be more precise. Pat, a lady in a village close to my parents' house had passed away, leaving hoards of craft stuff to her friends. One of them had been given a bag of buttons, and thought I might be able to put them to good use.

The sequinned cardigan and check skirt were bought from J Crew, a midmarket American retailer whose clothes the Obama family often wear; instead of changing accessories with each outfit, Michelle Obama wore the same double string of pearls throughout the visit. These are minor details, but ones which help fix the first lady

Though comparable numbers are not yet available for other venture capital sectors like software and biotechnology, both The Cleantech Group and GTM Research calculated drops in green tech funding to $1 billion and $836 million, respectively. The Cleantech Group says that's a 48 percent drop over last year.

Funding continues to pour into green-technology research and development despite low oil prices and a stubborn recession, but whether that will continue long enough to help the economy recover may be up to the government...