Here’s how a budget crisis can effect normal folks without much exposure to financial markets:

PALM BAY, Fla. — A budget crunch in Palm Bay could mean city residents who forget to secure car doors or close garages will get only a case number and nothing in terms of a visit by patrol officers if something is stolen.

The possible policy revision is part of a wider cost-cutting look at the Palm Bay Police Department’s $20 million annual budget, Local 6 News partner Florida Today reported.

“We’re looking very seriously at the types of calls we would go to,” Palm Bay Police Chief Bill Berger said. “Still, about 85 to 90 percent of the people who’ve had their cars broken into left the car doors open. But, obviously, if it’s an actual break-in, we’ll respond.”

The potential move is seen as an unusual step.

Other surrounding agencies — such as Melbourne Police Department — continue to respond to similar vehicle break-in calls.

Berger, however, pointed out that his agency has been hit hard by higher fuel costs and a cut in revenue. Earlier this year, Berger implemented a number of cost-saving efforts, including a no-idling policy for patrol cars.

I guess the lesson here is to start investing in locks.

As tax revenue goes down more and more police departments will need to take similar steps to curb costs. Are you prepared?

h/t Drudge

From Enrico Orlandini’s Worldwide Deflation:

Just about every significant economic/financial problem in the world can be traced back to the US Federal Reserve bank and a small group of individuals like Greenspan, Paulson, and Greenberg who ran the country into the ground. Every economy in the world has experienced booms and busts, but somewhere along the line someone came up with the bright idea of eliminating the busts. Throughout the 90’s the world experienced a series of economic crisis in Asia, Mexico, Russia, and even in the US markets that would have been enough to cleanse the system and restore equilibrium. On each and every occasion the Fed met the problem head on with the printing press, so a full blown reaction was avoided thereby creating what I call a “distortion” in the financial system that would eventually have to be sanitized. What any normal country would have done after a capital injection is withdraw that capital once things got better, but the US never did that. They just kept right on printing much like a drug addict keeps increasing the dosage because the old amount has less and less affect. Unfortunately, like a drug addict the economy eventually dies from an overdose, and that’s where we are today.

Read the rest to see why America’s financial problem will not end at America’s borders.

h/t SurvivalBlog