By Scott Minerd : In Goethe's 1831 drama Faust , the devil persuades a bankrupt emperor to print and spend vast quantities of paper money as a short-term fix for his country's fiscal problems. As a result of multi-trillion dollar quantitative easing programs, central banks around the world have compromised their ability to control the money supply, making them vulnerable to runaway inflation. Investment Implications To hedge against deterioration in the dollar's purchasing power, investors have already begun migrating toward hard assets such as gold, commercial real estate, artwork, collectibles, and rare consumer products like fine wines.