Charlie Munger: “Inflation is the biggest long-range danger we have next to nuclear war.”

Yesterday, Daily Journal Chairman and Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger shared his thoughts on the United States money supply and inflation.

Here’s what the legendary investor had to say:

Inflation is a very serious subject. You can argue it’s the way democracies die. So it’s a huge danger once you’ve got a populace that learns it can vote itself money. If you look at the Roman Republic, they inflated the currency steadily for hundreds of years. And eventually, the whole damn Roman Empire collapsed. So it’s the biggest long-range danger we have probably, apart from nuclear war. The safe assumption for an investor is that over the next 100 years, the currency is going to zero. That’s my working hypothesis.

Munger continued, warning that the inflationary crisis could lead to totalitarianism:

What brought in Hitler was the combination of the…