Silver Lining for the Silver Spoon Set?

Paused to admire Hawthorn's web site the other day. Hawthorn, PNC's financial service center for the rich, even offers a reading list. Several of the recommended books deal with the wealth-management preoccupation of a few years ago: How could ultra-high-net-worth families and advisers arm heirs with the values and coping skills they would need to navigate "the dark side of wealth?"

How long ago that seems! The financial economy has collapsed, and the falling stock market has made off with much of the family wealth that Madoff himself did not.

Could that be a lucky break for heirs?

For the next decade of so, anyway, many heirs no longer face the trauma associated with "Too Rich For Their Own Good." Fate has demoted them to a healthier, happier category: "Rich Enough to Do Anything; Not Rich Enough to Do Nothing."

Maybe every cloud does have a silver lining.