For the past several months, as the economy has been going south, a friend has been parading north up Madison Avenue earning cash by charging big-price-tag items from Dolce & Gabbana, Yves Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta, just to mention a few of her favorites, to her husband’s still-operative Amex card, and then turning around and distributing her purchases to a series of consignment shops in Manhattan and in the Hamptons, where my pal and her husband have a weekend house.

"At some point he will have to pull the plug on my shopping, but in the meanwhile I can stockpile some real cash," my friend explained, saying that the best consignment shops, such as Encore, on Madison Avenue — Jacqueline Onassis is said to have sent things to Encore when her marriage to Aristotle Onassis entered trouble waters — can yield a monthly return of about 40 to 50 percent of the purchase price. Not bad when you’re talking fashion boutique items that always seem to be over $2,000. My friend feels no guilt because, she tells me, her husband is "a cheap bastard." Aren’t they all?

Of course, my friend is not the only spouse in the city working a high-fashion recycling program, shopping for a rainy day if and when the money runs out or if her — or his — marriage is kaput, or both. (The kept husband or beau is not immune in this economy either.)

Red Alert Shoppers! Although buried in this weekend’s edition of the Financial Times, a short article has nonetheless waved a very big red flag and will make this scheme much harder to pull off.

(By the way, is anyone watching the service entrance of Bernie and Ruth Madoff’s building to see what goodies Mrs. Madoff might be shipping to the consignment shop of her choice? I’d also keep an eye on the back door for dry cleaning in case of any detours — furniture, paintings, rugs, jewelry repairs and fur storage as well.)

When Joan Lacey, described as a personal shopper to the Hollywood elite, is asked to make high-priced purchases and immediately return them for re-sale, she "can predict when a woman is about to leave her husband by the purchases she makes,” she tells the FT’s Syl Tang.

According to Tang, the situation has generated a niche business: the consignment personal shopper. Tang reports: "Last August Elan Barish launched The Stash Consignment, which focuses on the privatized consignment of such labels as YSL, Hermès and Chanel."

Barish tells the FT: "Consignment is definitely a way for a woman to gain some financial independence. Even as the Market was crashing, I was able to sell Hermès bags and Chanel jackets. A client asked me to sell her Birkin [handbag]; she said her ex-husband had given it to her and it was bad karma. That bad karma turned into $1,200."

The consignment trend is expected to increase, not decrease, especially as women in the baby boomer generation, who decided to stay home and raise their children, have difficulty making a living in this tough economy should their marriages fail.

"Women who are driven to do this" — recycling purchases to consignment shops — "are terrified that they will be destitute the next day. I had a client who would do this at Neiman Marcus because she had no cash for groceries or her kid’s school lunch. Reselling clothes has become a means of surviving when joint assets are inaccessible," says Lili Vasileff, president of the Association of Divorce Financial Planners.