If you had a fixed rate mortgage, it would be the height of folly to stop paying on it. You would be paying off the mortgage with cheaper dollars while increasing your equity in a fixed asset which also increases in value.
I understand your point. However, I am assuming the worst in terms of crisis. Inflation being only one component of the calamity he’s describing in the article, although he ignores all other implications. Lost job. No prospects for a new job. No income. High and fast growing prices. Bank holidays. Limited access to your own funds. And almost everyone else in the same boat. I am not sure how you see the asset increasing in value. My equity in that scenario is worthless. There is no market for my home. The situation would dictate survival measures, and whatever wealth and resources I have, in whatever form, would go toward that end alone. My gold coin (too bad I lost it in that tragic boating accident) nor my home will feed my family for very long.
Under normal circumstances Monocle is right, but there are now a number of peculiarities in our financial system that turn some of these conventional rules on their head. For one thing, this country has seen a lot of mortgage defaults for the simple reason that a mortgage is one of the easiest loans to walk away from (student debt and credit card debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy right now). Secondly, we've seen quite a few cases in recent years where people have been permitted by their banks to stop making any mortgage payments at all -- as long as they are willing to pay the taxes on the home and keep it insured.
One reason for the latter case is that in the U.S. today, an awful lot of homes are no longer a "fixed asset that also increases in value."
A better case might be made that in a full-blown financial collapse, the best course of action might be to move into a smaller home as a renter, stop paying the mortgage on the other home, and rent it out to a couple of dozen illegal immigrants from Mexico and China. Best to get the cash while you can, eh?