Investing guru Marc Faber advises investors to switch off Ben Bernanke, ignore his government-sponsored “We will keep inflation in check” line — and be sure to buy gold to protect yourself.

“Government is there to do something for itself, not for people,” he observes.

Faber says the government will have no choice but to print money like crazy and soon.

He points out the huge existing debt and the financial crunch that’s coming by 2018 when more retiring Baby Boomers make demands on Social Security and Medicare,

Don’t buy bonds or keep your money in cash, Faber counsels: Put money instead into things that will hold their value, like gold, preferably stored outside the U.S.

“With a chairman like Mr. Bernanke, I would assume that cash will be worth zero,” he says.

“Gold … has been a relatively stable commodity, unlike oil, which (last year) went from $147 to $32 a barrel.”

“I repeat what I have said in the past,” Faber says.

“No decent citizen should trust the Federal Reserve for one second. It’s very important that everyone own some gold because the government will make the dollar useless.”

President Barack Obama said that when it comes to declaring the recession over, he’ll defer to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, The Wall Street Journal reports.

“I’ll leave that up to the Fed chairman to pronounce whether it’s officially over or not,” Obama told CNN.

“What’s absolutely clear is that the financial markets are working again.”