My point is that there's nothing you can do with your money to ensure that it always has value, regardless of the magnitude of the crisis. There's always some risk. You can store your money in insured bank accounts, but we can see how well that's working out in Cyprus. You can store cash under your mattress, but high inflation will destroy its real value. You can buy gold and hoard it in your home, but there's no guarantee gold will be worth much, or that you'll even be allowed to keep it (see Executive Order 6102). You can buy land and if the state fails and thugs with bigger guns decide they want it more you're screwed. There's nothing you can do to eliminate all risk, and we're seeing now that risks we though were minimal (failures of deposit insurance schemes in the western world) aren't so minimal after all.