Christopher Torchia, Jakarta – It wasn't a bomb, but the box found next to a bank machine in an airport was meant to send a warning. Marked "explosive with remote," the package of plastic pipes and electric wires carried this warning: "Bring down prices or it will happen in other places."

No one claimed responsibility for leaving the mock bomb in the airport in Medan, on the island of Sumatra. But bomb threats have been on the rise in Indonesia since the value of the country's currency began plummeting seven months ago, causing a sharp rise in the price of food and other basic goods.

In the past week, there were bomb threats in a Jakarta bank building and a shopping mall. On Feb. 1, a Japan-bound Garuda Indonesia jetliner with 237 people aboard turned around after takeoff following a telephoned threat. Nothing was found on board.

Many people, already worried by riots over price increases, also fear common crime will soar as people lose jobs. One Jakarta security company that rents guards and sells alarm systems says business is up. Many clients are banks and multinational firms. "They're just trying to protect their properties," said Yohan Sethiadhi, manager of Securicor Indonesia.

Other Asian countries with economic woes are worried, too. Since November, South Korea has more than doubled its police force in Seoul to 22,000. In Bangkok, shoppers walking through mall parking lots have been mugged recently in a series of highly publicized incidents. Store owners say there are fewer people in the lots because business is down, making them more vulnerable to criminals.

One frustrated husband beat his wife after he lost his factory job in south Jakarta. A laborer in central Java killed his spouse in a dispute over money. As times get tougher, domestic violence is on the rise, a women's group in the capital says. The group, Kalyanamitra, is receiving half a dozen calls from battered women each day to its hot line. Before the crisis, the rate was one call a week. A newspaper reported on a worker who killed his wife because of money troubles. "I was angry because my wife didn't want to understand about my low wages," the Pos Kota newspaper quoted the worker as saying.

As unemployment spirals upward, Indonesia's finance minister is urging the rich to help slow the trend. "If you have one housemaid, hire another one," Mar'ie Muhammad said at a plenary session of Parliament this week. "If you don't have a gardener, hire one. If you need a driver, do it." Labor is cheap in Indonesia: Hiring a live-in maid costs as little as $27 a month at the current exchange rate.

Some goods, mostly imported, are becoming scarce. Sanitary napkins are reportedly hard to find in Yogyakarta, prompting one store to impose a quota of two boxes per customer.

And the riots that have erupted in more than a dozen towns aren't just over food prices. Fishermen in one village lobbed stones after a store jacked up the price of fishing nets by 10 percent.