More Americans Stashing Cash in Home Safes
May 4th, 2012My guess is that the chances of people being robbed by the police are much higher than the chances of being robbed by more traditional criminals.
Remember: In the eyes of the police, cash is evidence of criminal activity.
Via: Smart Money:
One thing that isn’t driving the safe boom, apparently, is crime. Indeed, U.S. burglary rates have been plunging for years. Still, experts say that many savers and investors feel a lingering sense of insecurity in their finances — a hard-to-shake fear borne out of the jolting recession and, at times, wobbly recovery — which is helping to spur the new safeguarding mentality. Tyler D. Nunnally, founder and CEO of Upside Risk, an Atlanta firm that researches investor psychology, says sticking tangible assets in a safe can be a natural reaction to volatility in the markets. “People dislike loss twice as much as they like gains,” he says. “They want to protect what they have.” Growing numbers of these fearful types simply don’t trust their banks to protect them: In a Gallup poll last year, a record-high 36 percent of Americans said they had “very little” or “no” confidence in U.S. banks. (In 2008 and 2009, when the financial crisis was peaking, that figure stood at 22 and 29 percent, respectively.) And growing concern about identity theft has made some people more eager to keep their assets in a form they can see and count, says R. Brent Lang, an investment manager in Surrey, British Columbia: “By acquiring one password, someone can wipe out all your digital wealth,” he says.
When you talk to people who have lived through the Depression this makes perfect sense. Money virtually disappeared from the banks. Gone. Kaput. Zippo. Not sure that with all the printing presses running whether a dollar is worth stashing, but I hope it will remain a medium of exchange.
In the event of a financial collapse; I suspect that paper cash will still be the primary medium of exchange for the short term. People are animals of habit and do what they have always done. Once imports stop because foreign sources won’t accept it that is when junk silver, silver, gold and other forms of exchange will become the norm. Ultimately displacing the FRN.