Different scale of seriousness. If the whole world goes into a recession there is a big difference between food shortages that you can buy your way out of with cash and food shortages that come as a result of societal collapse and money being worthless.

Being rich only matters as long as your investments/assets hold any value. If truly serious problems around your investments go to 0, your assets are only worth something as long as you can maintain control of them (police won't be around, nor will judges be) and even then your car will be worthless without gas.

It all depends on what meaning a person assigns to "serious" in this context. Personally as long as being rich solves my Problems I wouldn't describe any situation as serious.