QUESTION: Chris on Twitter is concerned about hyperinflation. What would be Dave’s plan if that starts?

ANSWER: Bullets and water.

Hyperinflation means that what it takes $100 to buy today, in two months, it would take $1,000 to buy it. So if a tank of gas was $20, two months later, you go to buy a tank of gas, it’d be $200. Two months later, it’d be $800. That’s hyperinflation. Basically, that means that the currency—people lose such faith in the currency because they’ve lost faith in our government and in our way of life because at the end of the day, money, as my friend Rabbi Lapin says, is spiritual. It’s spiritual because it’s based on trust. It’s not based on actual value.

The reason I’m willing to take a green piece of paper with a “100” scribbled on it by the government is because I know I can trade it to you for something that you have in goods or services. If I lose faith that I can trade it to you for goods or services, then I would no longer accept that as payment.

In other words, what causes hyperinflation is people have lost trust in the currency—and not a vague thing where they’re all sitting around the kitchen table talking politics and they’re mad at the world and have a conspiracy theory. I’m talking about the whole society begins to melt down on its trust to the point that there is no one willing to accept these paper dollars.

Hyperinflation is actually what put Hitler into power as much as anything. Pre-Nazi Germany—the Nazis, the fascists—came to power because literally, people were taking a wheelbarrow of cash in to buy a loaf of bread because people had lost faith in the currency. We also saw a similar thing at one point in Argentina in terms of hyperinflation. But that has happened very rarely in any economy. For a while, the peso in Mexico went crazy but not to the point, quite, of hyperinflation, but it really had unbelievable devaluation of the currency, which is hyperinflation.

I don’t honestly predict that in the U.S. at this stage of the game. Do we have serious moronic things and overspending going on in Washington that needs to stop and over-borrowing? Yes. And at some point, is there a tipping point if we don’t grow some backbones in some of our leaders who actually look at this and say, “This is stupid. We can’t borrow our way out of debt. We can’t just keep taking yet another credit card out on the nation”? Yeah, we’ve got to stop that, but is it to the point that I think it’s going to cause our way of life to end? No, I do not, and that’s what you’re saying when you say hyperinflation. You basically say that the grand experiment that is the United States of America has failed—not hypothetically, not in your conspiracy-theory mind, not in your philosophical opinion, but in actual practical, tactical fact, it’s over. No one can function anymore in the economy because it’s in such meltdown mode.

If that’s the case, then you could have hyperinflation. But until then, you can’t have hyperinflation and everything else going good because hyperinflation is based on a loss of trust in the value of the currency.

What would be your plan if that starts? Your only option—and it’s questionable whether this will work—is to own property—physical, hard assets—because paper assets will disappear. Physical, hard assets do not include gold because gold has never been used in a hyperinflation economy. Gold has never been used as a medium of exchange in a failed economy since the Roman Empire, so that’s all mythology sold to you by the gold-coin people on midnight cable TV right after a walk-in bathtub and a self-insert catheter ad. I mean, really, you’ve got to think about where you’re getting your financial advice here.

Gold is not the answer, but real estate might be, and I say might be because you might lose private property rights. We have a group of people now who are so upset in this country about the inequality of wealth that they would be leaning toward communism, which would be the fact that you would not be allowed to own anything. There’d be no private property. If the melted-down government were replaced by fascism—by communism, Marxists—because that’s fair—everybody gets a trophy although it’s a small trophy and one that’s not painted well, but we all get one under communism—then they would take away your property.

That happened in the Russian Revolution when the Marxists took over—killed everybody. And they slaughtered people, by the way, when that happened. If you haven’t read the history on that, it’s rather interesting. These wonderful communist people with flowers in their hair chop people’s heads off.

Basically, under that kind of a scenario, anything you own is taken away from you because the state becomes the owner of everything. You’re now in China. You’re now in Russia and so on. If that’s how we’re going to live because of hyperinflation, then there’s not anything you can hedge against that except a ticket out of here to somewhere else, and I don’t know where that would be if the U.S. economy goes to that point.

I think that’s a bunch of hooey is what it amounts to. Even though there’s fear in the news about hyperinflation, there’s crap in the news every day. Have you not noticed? I was looking at the websites the other day of some of the news channels. Have you noticed that their websites look a lot like The National Enquirer now? What used to be mainline major news media—when you look at their websites, they have links through to something that got washed up on the beach. “Sea monster on beach,” you know? And they’ve got every other link is to some sexual innuendo. A Playboy model on the cover of something or so-and-so’s nude pictures. And that’s on every site now. It’s like you’re looking at The National Enquirer. “Alien found in Nebraska,” you know, and all this crap. What used to be called serious media now has that on their website as their main links. I guess there’s enough of a market for that because the culture has been so dumbed down that we now believe what’s printed in The National Enquirer. We’re that shallow and stupid.

The hyperinflation goes right there between the alien, the link through to the Playboy pictures, and the sea monster that was washed up on the beach. The hyperinflation is right there with that. It goes right there in that category. In other words, I really don’t think there’s any credibility to that offering by the “news media.” I don’t think hyperinflation is on our doorstep. But that is not to say that I think that the people in Washington are doing a good job. I think the liberal spending is completely out of control. Anyone who tries to stop that spending is a racist now. Anyone who tries to stop that spending is ignorant, and they’re the problem with our economy.

No, you’re the problem with our economy. If you’re a Democrat or you’re a Republican or you’re a progressive or you’re a liberal or you’re a so-called conservative and you believe that continuing to spend at our current rate is an okay thing, you’re the problem with our economy. It’s amazing to me that the same people who tell you that the sea monster is on the beach are the people who are saying we need to stop spending are racist and are the problem with our economy. Sea monster beware.