Clickers and Wives Looking for Exit Strategies: the Least Pleasant Article You Will Read Today

“Don’t make me look like a jerk,” she told a reporter, “but I cannot bring myself to buy my children’s clothes at Wal-Mart.”

—The New York Times, January 1, 2009

The least pleasant article you will read today comes courtesy of the New York Times, which ventured into the far reaches of the Connecticut suburbs to see how the recently and not-so-recently off laid masters of the financial universe are coping with unemployment.

Turns out, the adjustment is at least as hard on the marital status of the couples involved as it is on the job-losers themselves, at least according to the Times:

Amy Reiss, a divorce lawyer in Manhattan, said that she had seen a spate of women seeking to end their marriages after they re-entered the work force or expanded their careers to replace their husbands’ income. The wives don’t resent working, she said. In fact, they’re pleased to contribute.

But “the husbands become what I call ‘clickers,’ ” Ms. Reiss said. “These are unemployed men who sit on the couch all day, holding the remote and watching TV, unable to step up and take over some of the household tasks and chores associated with raising the kids.”

Those women, she said, come to her looking for an exit strategy. Lest you think you’ll find yourself feeling sorry for the wives whose lives have been upended by the New Post-Credit Bubble Economy, however, consider yourself forewarned that they do not come across sympathetically, either, as the following dialogue between a wife and her husband should make clear:

“Don’t make me look like a jerk,” she told a reporter, “but I cannot bring myself to buy my children’s clothes at Wal-Mart.”

“But do you have to buy them at Ralph Lauren?” Scott shot back.

The entire story can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/fashion/11berrys.html?ref=business

We’ll try to have something cheerier to write about Monday. How about Warren Buffett as Morningstar’s CEO of the Year”?

Jeff Matthews I Am Not Making This Up

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