In Weimar-style hyperinflation, what should people do to protect themselves?

Buying gold is great, but you are not going to get any interest, and it will only preserve your purchasing power - that is, until word gets out that you have gold. Then you'd better be ready to either leave town or deal with an angry mob. Borrowing money to buy inflation proof assets works great if and only if you know exactly when hyperinflation will begin. If you get this wrong, you could be in big financial trouble. Real estate should lose value due to the hyperinflationary effect on the mortgage industry (nobody wants to loan money for 30 years when inflation is 9,000%), although it will appear to increase in value when compared with the hyperinflating currency. Good luck exchanging it for food or collecting rent. History tells us that new money added to circulation takes about 2 years to produce its inflationary effects, so we probably won't see much action until maybe ate or mid 2011, but it could happen sooner - a TRILLION is a lot of money to have added to the economy in the last 6 months or so. Once high rates of inflation are apparent, foreign governments will see the value of their US bonds falling and will probably begin dumping their holdings of dollars, thus accelerating hyperinflation. Once the cost of everything is skyrocketing, the government will not be able to collect taxes fast enough, and it will have to resort to printing even more money (as happened in Germanys Weimar Republic when 99% of their government spending was with printed money and only 1% from tax receipts) further speeding up the hyperinflationary death spiral. During hyperinflation in Germany, the farmers stopped selling food in the cities because they didn't want to exchange their crops for worthless paper money. This caused the people to travel to the country and loot the farms, and their society nearly broke down at this point. Most people probably won't lose their houses because their mortgages will be wiped out by hyperinflation. Paying to heat the house is another story. When this happened in Germany, it was not uncommon to see people who were visibly malnourished. Hyperinflation is really bad for the poor and middle class, but generally benefits the rich. Remember, hyperinflation is a local event; it does not affect currencies in foreign countries, and may even help their stock markets via shifting purchasing power to unaffected countries. Stashing money in a foreign country in a foreign currency is the best protection. You can then get some interest on your savings, or even invest your money outside of the USA, & be making a profit outside of the influence of hyperinflation. In today's world, you can just buy what you needed with your debit card issued by the Swiss bank, and the money you spend would not be converted into hyperinflating dollars until you actually spend it. I have a site where I help people prepare for what is coming: swissbankaccounts.webs.com I hope this helps!

Borrow all you can now to buy real assets, Make sure some of them are liquid (gold is one, but a strong currency [dollar? euro? yen? even yuan] is also good) so you can sell them later for a very high profit and repay your loans with worthless money, while having gotten your other assets for essentially nothing. Of course, if you are wrong, then you are stuck with expensive loans that will be hard to repay. But where do you live that you are expecting Weimar-style hyperinflation? Zimbabwe already has it so you are too late there. Greece isn't going to have it, because Germany won't let the euro inflate that much.