We promised ourselves a while ago that we would stop railing against the media's slavish promulgation of "the latte effect" -- the notion that all that stands between us and financial freedom is our penchant for froufrou coffee. After all, we reasoned, our time would be better spent dissecting the coverage of Wall Street's "shameful" bonuses, or the bad bank debate, or even John Thain's $35,000 commode, than worrying about the personal finance press' inexplicable obsession with our caffeine consumption habits.

But then we stumbled upon this: a report on ABC's "Nightline," in which a financial planner claimed that one of his clients frittered away $12,000 a year at Starbucks. That's right. $12,000. A year. On coffee.

We couldn't get it out of our heads. How did that guy do it? We're talking $1,000 a month. Or $250 a week. Or about $35 a day. That's a lot of lattes, even at Starbucks. No days off. What else did Mr. Coffee order? Daily breakfast paninis? Multiple maple oat nut scones? Fistfuls of Norah Jones CDs? Neither "Nightline" nor the financial planner says. We're just told that this poor, misguided spendthrift, "who does make a good amount of money on an annual basis," discovered his $12,000 problem only when he sat down to do a budget. "And then it was like, wow," says the financial planner. "That's a heck of a lot of money to spend at Starbucks."

And a heck of a lot of bull for viewers to swallow. The underlying message: If you, hapless consumer, don't curb your sinful Starbucks habit ASAP, you'll be out $12,000 before taxes. And you're so clueless, you won't even realize it. It's the kind of cautionary tale showing up a lot these days in a media that has trained its eye on all spending it deems extravagant, from a taste for fancy coffee to Wells Fargo & Co.'s Las Vegas junket. On that same "Nightline" broadcast, another of the financial planner's clients comes in for a drubbing for "occasionally" treating her kids to "$7 or $10" DVDs at Wal-Mart. "Even if it's from Wal-Mart, even if it's a bargain, it's still not the best thing to do for your financial health," lectures guest Ori Brafman, author of a book called "Sway," not to confused -- or perhaps too easily confused -- with Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" or Richard Thaler's "Nudge." (What is it about books on behavioral psychology with monosyllabic titles? We digress.)

Brafman tells viewers that poor spending habits are "not a matter of being an idiot; it's a matter of psychology playing tricks on us." Whew. Not an idiot. What a relief. And don't get too depressed. "If you have a job, if you're putting even a little bit of money in the bank, then you can get out of debt and it's a matter of really belt-tightening rather than taking the belts and creating it into a noose and hanging ourselves." Save the noose for people who really deserve it, like bankers.

OK, Brafman didn't say that last part. But that is clearly the media's message these days as it opines on the wretched excesses of Wall Street, symbolized by private planes, ritzy offices, big bonuses and, now, a certain 18th-century French queen. "If you think about history books, and we read about Marie Antoinette, and we cannot believe that actually she said, 'Let them eat cake,' " Arianna Huffington tells "Nightline" a few nights later, comparing Marie with our "tone deaf" Wall Street bankers. "That she was so totally oblivious, that she was so not getting it, that she could never imagine that her head would be on the guillotine."

Well, Arianna, we can't believe you actually said that -- or, more to the point, where you actually said that. ABC interviewed the proprietress of The Huffington Post while she was attending -- wait for it -- the World Economic Forum in Davos. Really, is there any event more emblematic of excess than Davos? Is anyone participating in that gilded gabfest in the best position to opine on others' frivolities? Yes, we know, this year's forum was more "serious" than past events, with lots of sessions on faith and philanthropy and fewer celebs clogging the slopes. Attendees were even invited to a simulation of a refugee camp facing rebel attack. Very realistic. Not a latte or a slice of cake to be found.

Yvette Kantrow is executive editor of The Deal.