It is getting worse: home vaults. The Times of London reports:
Sales of household safes have surged as wealthy savers concerned about the
health of banks opt to keep cash at home.
Leading safe manufacturers contacted by The Times said that they had
seen a big increase in demand. Many predicted that fears of meltdown in the
banking sector would mean a further rush before Christmas.One company said that sales had increased by a quarter, while another said
that its staff had received calls from panicking investors who now wanted to
keep their savings locked away at home.
Here are previous installments in the series.
Next item with countercyclical demand: crowbars.
Surely the important question here is whetehr the buyers are able to finance the safes….
The obvious market here is for deposit-only banks; ones that charge you a fee for rent and security, and simply store your money, with no loans and no risks of a run or default.
Wasn’t that, in fact, the origin of banking as such?
There’s room for a new Bank Of Amsterdam, at least temporarily, I guess.
This type of panic is more dangerous to the financial system than any default on any debt. What we need is for some leader of some sort to give a speech calming the panic…something like “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Someone once said that, and it sounds wise. Too bad there’s no political office where someone can say something like that.
I predict the next bubble will be in vaults. Hence, I will develop a vault that can hold other rapidly appreciating vaults.
In the 1990s, Australian billionaire Kerry Packer had $AUD 5.4 million of gold stolen from a vault in his executive suite. If he wasn’t able to secure it, how would the average person?
We are also living in an age where private information is easily hacked and transmitted everywhere. The client database of the vault company would be acquired and those addresses targeted for burglary or violent home invasions, and not by local amateurs but by professionals flying in and out from other countries specifically for that purpose.
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