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Seems like there has been quite a bit of talk about the next 9/11 or Pearl Harbor could be an electronic attack on our Financial / Banking System. I've thought about putting a nice sum (maybe $30-50K) of Green Cash in a Safety Deposit box. It earns next to nothing in any type of bank account.
How much green cash do you keep for easy access? Does it worry you that all your savings could conceivably be erased by some hacker ?
With todays interest rates, why not convert it to cash ?
truly, should there be electronic attack, chances are you won't be able to access even that. also, should that happen, says who money will actually have any worth? You guys here donno what it means, when all your saving turn into dust in matter of 5 minute 9 pm news announcement. I do. And participated in this several times. Also, know that there are more solid currencies than paper, and it's not gold either.
Personally, I'd have come up with good mini safe and figured nice place where to dig it deep into dirt in my property, and set it there. Mark with a shrub or something. But no more than $10K.
I'm not normally a paranoid person but after talking to several different people from various walks of life on separate occasions they have all said the same thing, have cash on hand in small bills, $1 bills as much as possible because if you have to negotiate for a gallon of water, would you rather negotiate with $1 bill or a $20 bill. Have this cash on hand, in your home, not in a bank. If there is a financial crisis, what's to say you can get INTO your bank to get your money out of your safe deposit box?? I wasn't planning on having THAT much money on hand though.
There have been many leading economists that are predicting a market crash worse then 2006 as well....
I'm not normally a paranoid person but after talking to several different people from various walks of life on separate occasions they have all said the same thing, have cash on hand in small bills, $1 bills as much as possible because if you have to negotiate for a gallon of water, would you rather negotiate with $1 bill or a $20 bill. Have this cash on hand, in your home, not in a bank. If there is a financial crisis, what's to say you can get INTO your bank to get your money out of your safe deposit box??.
Great advice, thanks. It does make sense to keep some money on hand and fairly easy to get to in case. I'm the least to be paranoid but I do believe in being prepared.
At least with a SD Box there is a better chance than no chance if electronic.
If an electronic attack results in the bank being unable to access their records nor their backup, your paper copies of all bank statements will be valid proof of your account status. Under the circumstances of risk, probably not a good idea to go paperless. As long as the bank was protected at the time of the electronic crash, your assets will retain their value, but you might have prove your balance.
Personally, I always keep several thousand dollars in my house, even something like a hurricane can make virtual assets inaccessible for a while.
living here in nyc we have had our share of disasters. right after 9/11 many data lines were down and atm's in many places didnt work.
same after sandy. however keep in mind most banks didnt even open since there was no reason to open at all without data links so access to safe deposit boxes was not possible.
Agree with the others that if you're going to go that route I wouldn't keep it in a safe deposit box, but instead would keep it at home or in a secret location.
I think a better solution to be ready for a potential electronic war on the banking system would be to have a few weeks to a few months worth of food/necessities on hand. If the whole financial system went down I think buying anything through normal avenues would be either a) a madhouse or b) tightly controlled by the gov't. If you've got 50k in cash I suppose you could afford to pay your neighbors $20 for a can of beans, but I'd rather be the guy with the cans of beans. That way you can sit back and wait for the thing to sort itself out (assumption being that it's a short to medium term thing and not a total destruction of the system for the rest of our lives type of scenario).
I live in earthquake country and all of us are supposed to be prepared for (among other things) power outages lasting for a week or more. If the power is out, the bank's doors will be closed and locked because the bank cannot process any transactions without power. Likewise, the ATM's will be inoperative. But I keep only $800 at home, all in 20's, plus food and water supplies, of course.
I don't quite get the huge amounts mentioned in the OP, unless what is meant is that we will permanently lose whatever is in our bank accounts, which I just don't see happening.
Most banks have their transactions take place in atleast two places (or three, or four, or five for larger banks) in real time. Keep in mind that almost everything financial is digital. Our national debt; treasury dollars, bank balances. Just digital representations, at the end of the day.
Now what type of attack are you referring to? The financial system is interconnected but not dependant on one another. If Wells, UBS et al get hacked, that won't affect BOA or Chase. If a credit card processor gets hacked (which has happened), that won't affect your ability to access your funds at the aformentioned bank.
Lets say an EMP style attack on the east coast, lets say new york. Some of the smaller banks may have issues but the larger banks more than likely have their transactions replicated on the East Coast or midwest, including all the customer facing stuff. People on the west coast really shouldn't have too many issues.
It's been over 10 years since 9/11; practices and techniques have evolved to take these types of disasters into account, Especially for banks. Honestly, I don't think there is something that is so super massive that it'll take out power for the entire nation in one go. "The Grid" â„¢ does not work such that hacking merely one of the grids on the east coast (there are many) would immediately effect the west coast. With that said, with us nearing 2013, it is downright trivial to mobilize and or deploy network connectivity to anywhere in the nation, particularly using satellite. If I wanted to, I could setup a ground station here and at my neighbors house, lease satellite connectivity, and with about 45 minutes of setup (and maybe stop for a sandwich), have a fully PCIDSS compliant link between our networks.
Definately keep copies of your statements and all of the obvious things. But it would take a seriously coordinated effort to destroy all financial records pertaining to your account such that it would be impossible to recover. Hackers would need to
A) Destroy all databases (primary and remote) containing the transactions pertaining to your account (which could be in multiple places across the globe).
C) Destroy all the tape backups containing transaction history.
D) Destroy any paper backups (although these probably won't exist).
E) Set fire to the HQ
in that case just make sure you have a gun handy. Clearly some nation state(s) are after your bank and probably want you disposed of.
So yes the next major attack will be cyber based (actually, these types of attacks are ongoing as we speak) however financial, power etc systems are not setup to be dependent on one another, and gaining access to or destroying one entity won't affect the others to the point of desecration. At most it will more than likely be an extremely high profile target but something that won't affect the entire nation.
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