Sales of Home Safes on the Rise

I saw an article this morning in the hometown newspaper about a recent rise in the sales of home safes (see Google news for a bunch of similar articles). As people have become concerned about leaving their money in banks, they appear to be turning more toward the home safe solution.

The perceived cost of using banks for money storage has risen leading to an increase in demand for a substitute product, the home safe. Perhaps this will, in turn, lead to an increase in home robberies. Any thieves reading this blog now know that the incentive to engage in robbery has increased with larger potential rewards from robbing the average house (assuming you are the type of thief who can figure out how to crack a home safe). That's one of the things that's cool about thinking in economic terms: what might be the unintended consequences or unforseen outcomes of events like this.