Such a decline dramatically lowers the price of most assets. It impairs liquidity and severely punishes those who borrowed heavily to buy stocks, real estate or collector's items. However, before the ceiling caves in you can see cracks in the plaster. Once you personally become convinced that some very big cracks are appearing overhead, you may want to look for a place to transfer assets. The best option may be gold and silver.
Worried people gravitate to precious metals.
That's why these metals should hold up in a crash. In fact, if things get bad enough, they may be the only thing going up when everything else is going down. Furthermore, if the current attempt to reliquify the system works, and expansion continues, the gargantuan amount of new money that's created to get the economic balloon reinflated will cheapen the dollar. Silver should flourish in such an environment. With that amount of inflationary purchasing media, you could buy the entire known above ground supply of silver one-hundred times over and still have ten billion left over in change.