Good point. The government certainly could “accidently” target your accounts for elimination.
Cash is important. When I’m abroad, even though I have contacted my credit card company that I would be leaving the US, they have denied service because of “suspicious activity”. Who wants to spend hours on the phone trying to get things cleared up when you need to pay your hotel bill. Good thing I had cash.
Sure, I’m talking about a minor convenience, but I’m sure anyone can see how such as system could be abused by the 0bama administration through back-doors via credit card companies. The excuses that the company made a mistake, or some hacker stole information, or the card-holder was put on a watch list are a good way for the government to escape responsibility.
It doesn’t even have to be directly. I’ve keeping a list over the years of ways you can “legitimately” wake up to a zero balance in your account or an unusable credit card:
- IRS garnishment for back taxes
- State tax board garnishment for back taxes
- your company made a mistake, two direct deposits are both taken back out instead of just the erroneous one
- “cleared” checks bounced / taken back out (even cashier’s checks can bounce)
- State again, for unpaid child support
- Sheriff / court, unpaid civil judgement
- credit card fraud alert, as you mentioned
- business accounts: deposit to you is from somebody “bad”, it’s taken back out
Double those for “mistakes”, including “we think you are dead”.
Hackers / ID theft of your own account.
ATM or banking computer down.