The anti-Jim Cramer

Matt Haber of the New York Observer writes Wednesday about GQ money columnist Joel Lovell, who is changing the tone of his column given the current economic turmoil.

Haber writes, “Mr. Lovell’s semi-monthly column is an angry little wound of class anxiety amid the men’s magazine’s celebration of four-figure shoes and photos of Jennifer Aniston without her clothes (and, O.K., some serious journalism that won the magazine a National Magazine Award for General Excellence last year). Men + Money started in 2007, when GQ editor in chief Jim Nelson decided he wanted to have a regular guy talk about his finances — not a belligerent Jim Cramer–type telling you what to do with yours.  ‘It’s sort of nominally a money column,’ says GQ executive editor Andy Ward. ‘It’s more like the emotional life of money, not investment advice.’

“As the economy has gone into free fall, with more people thinking and panicking about their money than at any other time in recent memory, Mr. Lovell’s musings have taken on a new relevance. A father of three young daughters, married to a psychologist, he has come to see that his problem is not just with money itself, but with his (and many people’s) relationship with money.

“The value of those things he wants is more symbolic than actual: The Wolf, which Mr. Lovell noted often occupies pride of place in the kitchens of his friends’ newly renovated homes (including that of his friend and editor, Mr. Ward), speaks to him as ‘more like the perfect symbol of the next level you can’t reach,’ he said last week over lunch near Condé Nast headquarters. ‘It’s the thing that you realize is just out of reach. If you had a little more, you could have that.'”

Read more here.