The Economy Stays Cool, This Is A Robbery

You don’t need a YouTube stunt to see that the economy is bad and getting worse:

In what may be the latest sign of the harsh economic times, five banks in four boroughs were robbed on Monday, four of them within an hour and a half.

But if the robberies, in their frequency and timing, were startling, so too was their brazenness. Most of them occurred in heavily trafficked areas in broad daylight, including one that took place steps away from Lincoln Center in the middle of the afternoon.

Bank robberies in the city are up by 54 percent this year, the Police Department said, to 431 as of Monday afternoon, from 280 at this time last year. Robbery statistics over the past 20 years suggest that the robberies may have been fueled in part by the financial desperation that sets in during a recession and the added pressures of the holiday season.

The authorities took notice in early September, when the number of bank robberies for the year reached 268, compared with 183 during the same period in 2007.

. . .

“It’s well documented that during a recession, bank robberies go up,” [Michelle Renee, a former banking industry executive who tracks bank robbery trends] said. “But also, this time of the year is the busiest time for bank robberies. So you combine those two together and it becomes a dangerous time for bank employees.”