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Married couples are staying together this year -- in part, it seems, because misery requires company.

The economics for splitting up have never been worse, lawyers say, and the result is a dip in Michigan filings, and unusual settlements that keep even divorced couples living in the same house.

"We used to work out who has custody of the children. Now we work out who has custody of the kitchen," says Harriet Rotter, a Franklin divorce lawyer. "She gets the kitchen from 5-6:30 p.m., he gets it from 6:30-8. And no, I'm not kidding."

Conflicts over money traditionally drive couples apart, but in this economy, fewer couples -- even those who can't stand each other -- realize they can afford divorce. As the country song goes, "That's why it's cheaper to keep her" or him.

At first, the comments at some of my favorite blogs were full of snark but at least well-informed snark.  Now many of the comments are by either right-wing or leftist conspiracy theorists or by people who throw around the concept of "nationalization" as a means of punishing the greedy capitalist pigs who got us into this mess.

Nationalization (or temporary takeover, preprivatization, bad big/good bank, or other synonyms) may be the ultimate outcome and may happen sooner rather than later. (For all we know the Obama Administration may be working its way methodically towards nationalization.)   I haven't seen much discussion in the blogs about how to effectuate nationalization and how to deal with contracts with foreign banks and companies.  Economists like Krugman sometimes seem to be in an ivory tower and deaf to international issues and domestic political problems with nationalization.  

As to the latest contretemps about AIG using taxpayer funds to bail out counterparties, there may be something wrong there.  If it can be shown that the counterparties received more than they were legally entitled to or were given an illegal preference or a legal preference that was motivated by improper reasons (like favoritism), then I'll get excited.  But to get excited just because there were big banks and foreign banks getting paid shows ignorance of the fact that most of the large transactions involved the same players.  

If you listen to what Geithner and Bernanke say, part of their mission is to get the credit markets working again.  And a key to that mission is to restore and maintain confidence not only intranationally but internationally.  

And for all our focus on the cost of moving food, transportation accounts for barely one-tenth of a food product's greenhouse gas emissions. Far more significant is how the food was produced--its so-called resource intensity.

Certain foods, like meat and cheese, suck up so many resources regardless of where they're produced (a pound of conventional grain-fed beef requires nearly a gallon of fuel and 5,169 gallons of water) that you can shrink your footprint far more by changing what you eat, rather than where the food came from.

According to a 2008 report from Carnegie Mellon University, going meat- and dairyless one day a week is more environmentally beneficial than eating locally every single day.

Mother Jones via Laura Rozen & tristero