Poor Americans never had financial security. Now, neither does the middle class. Delusional prosperity is gone and consumers express their anxiety by cutting spending and hoarding cash. But spending on some products mounts. First the good news within all the bad economic bad news was the booming sales of guns and ammunition. Now, with mounting fear, distrust and panic, this has been followed by skyrocketing sales of home safes. Maybe that means some Americans choose guns and others select safes to protect their valuables, particularly cash that they are afraid to put in banks.
Really good safes can cost many hundreds or thousands of dollars. To ward off thieves, safes have to be really big and heavy; otherwise they simply get carted away, allowing the criminals to spend all the time necessary to break into them. So it is more than a little silly for people to go into a store pick out a relatively small safe and take it home. If you can carry a safe away, so can any thief. Safes less than about 1,000 pounds should be bolted to a secure floor to maximum security. Experts also say such safes are best placed in basements because in a house fire they could fall through floors. Underwriters Laboratories tests and certifies safes, particularly for fire and theft resistance. There are various levels of fire resistance.
Besides loss of trust in banks, fear of desperate fellow citizens (or illegal immigrants) apparently is driving safe sales. This is reasonable because there is solid evidence that property crimes really do mount during terrible economic times.
Richard Krasilovsky of Empire Safe in New York City noted: "We've had customers come in who are putting half a million to a million dollars in cash in a safe in their home." One of the safes he offers costs $4,000. His business was up 20 to 40 percent in recent months.
At Megasafe in Little Ferry, New Jersey , sales are up 20 percent. At Value Safes in Corpus Christi , Texas , sales were up 60 percent from 2007 to 2008 and are up 40 percent over those sales for 2009. At Bruce's Safes Unlimited in Tucson, Arizona, sales are up 30 percent and the owner said: "I have a lot of people coming saying they're pulling out cash and they want to hang on to cash because they're not sure which direction the country's going to take."
At Accu-Safes Inc in Plainview , New York , some customers are seeking out the more-difficult-to-heist models, with 600- to 900-pounders costing $3000 or more, and that has not deterred surging sales.
Sentry Safe, the world's largest safe manufacturer reports an increase in sales from 30 to 50 percent since September 2008.
Not everyone is proud of their safe purchase. Some are sheepish about it, said Larry Hilliard, of Advance Safes LLC, Avondale , Arizona . "They're embarrassed with what they're doing because they know it's something that's not ideal. They're even setting up strange delivery times because they don't want the neighbors to know they bought a safe," he said. So he schedules some truck runs before daybreak.
Even Keeping Women Safe which supplies "diversion safes", money hideaways that are disguised to look like everyday household cleaners, deodorant sticks, paint buckets, soda cans and cans of potato chips has seen a 15 percent jump in sales.
When considering whether to stash cash in a safe people should remember that loss of money inside a home from burglary or fire may not be covered by homeowner's insurance. In contrast, money deposited in a bank or credit union is covered by FDIC up to $250,000. Even when banks fail, as they have been lately, they are quickly reopened under new ownership, providing depositors with easy access to their funds. But many Americans obviously trust their own safe more than they trust the government. And Europeans are behaving in exactly the same way, with safe sales spiking all over Europe . For example, German safe merchants said there had been a 30 percent increase in sales to private customers between October, 2008 and February of this year.
Of course the really paranoid have also bought gold and want to stash that in home safes. And those people probably have one or more guns as well.
Finally, we should all understand that dollars in safes or otherwise hidden in homes do not circulate and contribute to the economy, the way that money in banks does, assuming that banks actually lend money they receive from depositors. This may be a big assumption these days.
Joel S. Hirschhorn has succeeded as: a full professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison; a senior staffer, U.S. Congress (Office of Technology Assessment); head of an environmental consulting company; Director of Environment, Energy and Natural Resources, National Governors Association; now an author and consultant. Recent books are: Sprawl Kills - How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money, and Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government. He has published hundreds of articles in newspapers, magazines, journals and on many web magazine sites. He has given hundreds of talks at a wide range of conferences worldwide. He focuses on American culture, politics and government, and health issues.
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