Sometimes it's good to know that Presidents go through the same problems (and embarrassments) like we do. Especially when it happens to be a financial crisis, involving our credit cards.
Last month, President Obama was at a dinner date with first lady Michelle Obama at a New York restaurant when his credit card got declined at the time of payment, The Hill reported.
"I went to a restaurant up in New York when I was -- during the U.N. General Assembly, and my credit card was rejected," Obama said Friday while signing an executive order which would protect consumers from identity theft.
"Turns out I guess I don't use it enough, so they thought there was some fraud going on. Fortunately, Michelle had hers," he added, to laughs from the audience at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. "But I was trying to explain to the waitress: 'You know, I really think that I've been paying my bills.'"
"Even I'm affected by it."
On Friday, Obama announced that the federal government will start issuing cards with more secure technology, which would include a digital chip in addition to a magnetic stripe on the back of the card. Instead of using a signature for access, the cards will allow people to enter a PIN number, a security standard common for ATMs.
The move comes after a recent trail of retailers and financial institutions from Target to Home Depot to JPMorgan Chase have suffered from major data breaches, eventually compromising personal and financial data about hundreds of millions of Americans, The Washington Post reported.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time the president has faced a financial rejection. In July, he had to ask trip director Marvin Nicholson if his credit card would work before handing it in for a barbecue payment of $300 in Austin.
Additionally, former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke recently confessed that he failed to refinance his home since the market is so tight in Chicago.
"I recently tried to refinance my mortgage and I was unsuccessful in doing so," he said, according to Bloomberg. "I'm not making that up."
