The economy hits home

You know, in these bleak economic times, it's always good to see stories that really point out the impact that people are feeling. Of course, instead, we keep getting stories about people who make (or made) more money in a year than most of us see in a lifetime, but that's besides the point. We can definitely get something out of people needing to curtail things like private drivers, cleaning services, and the like just to make ends meet. What we get out of it may be anger at the extremely wealthy, and pity for the cut services, but we're still getting something.

Which leads us to today's article. It's hard to see an upside to any obvious money grab that goes on (unless it's part of a game show, in which case we slavishly watch and shout at the television screen). But when you decide that your divorce settlement of $43 million just isn't enough, we have to cry foul.

A lot of her argument hinges around her weekly living expenses that float somewhere in the $50,000 range. That's right, she has expenses every week that total more than a lot of people see in their yearly salary. And what did she do for that money? Well, she was attractive, unemployed, and married to a CEO worth over a quarter of a billion dollars. You do the math. And wear a helmet, because doing that kind of math could cause serious injury.

The sheer audacity of the situation strikes us as odd. Not only is fighting the post-nuptial agreement that she signed, but she's doing it at a time where the world is struggling to pull themselves out of a recession. While there's a definite impact on a consumer economy when one person can no longer spend that kind of money every week, there's also an impact from all of the people angry that someone who did nothing to get their money is trying to fight for more, while plenty of others are dealing with unemployment.

But still, wow. That's an awful lot of cappuccino.