After the financial markets and the real economy it is now time for the state budget to feel the effects of the crisis. It is a tradition in the Netherlands that the next year's budget is presented on the third Tuesday of September, which is also when queen Beatrix addresses a joint session of both houses of the Dutch parliament, but the documents were leaked to the press over the weekend despite promises of strict secrecy.

This year's Budget Day message is gloomy: there will be less money to go around, important cuts will be have to be made and the tax burden will become heavier - not right away, but down the line. The government is facing a number of "fundamental political reassessments" to make sure that the Netherlands, with less money, will still be in a good position in 2020.

Despite incessant talk of a global economic crisis that is still a tough message to sell to the public. The Netherlands still has the lowest unemployment rate in Europe; the Amsterdam stock exchange was up by 50 percent over the past six months and the global recession is expected to pass at the end of this quarter.

According to many indicators, the crisis is already behind us at a time when most people have yet to notice its impact. Indeed, average purchasing power is actually up by a few percentage points this year, and next year the Dutch will be only slightly worse off.

At the same time the Netherlands is hit harder than many other countries. Its export-driven open economy is suffering from the collapse of world trade and the banking crisis is taking its toll on the national economy, home to many worldwide banks and insurers (ABN Amro, ING, Aegon, among others). Investments were down by a quarter over the past two years, and the number of unemployed is expected to double to 8 percent by 2010.

If the public is still virtually unaffected by the crisis that is because the government has absorbed the blow instead by stepping in to rescue the banks and stimulate the economy. The result is a public debt that is expected to rise by 50 percent over the next three years to roughly 380 billion euros.

For the record: the rescue operations for the banks are not the main cause for the rising public debt. More than half the debt increase is caused by a growing budget deficit. In 2009 and 2010, the government is expected to spend more than 60 billion euros more than it will receive. That is because a choice was made not to let the budget shrink with the economy, but to keep spending at a level more consistent with a growing economy.

This Keynesian policy cannot be maintained, because the costs of the debt burden will reduce the investments in education, care and education. The budget shows that the interest on the state debt will again become one of the primary expenditures of the government, just like it was during the economic drop in the 1980s. Bos wants to significantly reduce the debt burden starting 2012, which is when many of the cuts will be felt by Dutch citizens.

Research shows that it typically takes about five years before the effect of a financial crisis is felt on the job market. The same delayed effect is true for government finances. People who lose their jobs, feel the crisis immediately. But the average citizen will only feel the pain when the hole in the government finances caused by the crisis needs to be addressed. And that is only just starting to happen.