Massive Ignorance
Their does seem to be a massive amount of ignorance about how these things will work - even amongst the supposedly well-educated and tech-savvy Reg readership. To the Daily Mail touting fear-mongers above, a thief cannot wipe you out by getting your NFC chip - or not in the way you seem to be suggesting.
For a start, NFC payments will only work for a small value transaction. Cup of coffee, trip on the tube, newspaper and a bar of chocolate, itunes download. That sort of thing. A thief is going to need to drink a HELL of a lot of coffee to wipe out your average bank account.
There is a suggestion that you could also either set a daily limit or top-up your NFC account like you might top up a PAYG card. This is where I don't like the idea of NFC being embedded in your smartphone. For a lot of us our smartphone will be our means of topping up our account or changing our daily limit. Whilst there will be extra security levels in place, for me, this creates too much of a single point of failure and I'd far rather the NFC chip be embedded in my existing plastic cards.