The conference wasn't open to the public I believe. I was just lucky in that I was corresponding with Grant and he suggested we meet for coffee so it was all good.
It's impossible to know when this all implodes. I think we all agree that the laws of mathematics now dictate that there will be an end point to the debt situation. As the old quote goes "inevitable does not mean imminent".
Another little anecdote that I thought was interesting:
Grant relayed that two very wealthy associates, completely independent of each other and who do not know each other both approached JP Morgan to redeem their paper-gold investments (i.e. get physical gold) that they held with the Bank. I don't know when this occurred but got the impression that it was relatively recently. The quantum for each investor was +$10m. Each, independently, were told that they could not have physical delivery and if they had issue with that then they would need to sue JPM. The investors merely sold their paper investments on-market and used the proceeds to purchase physical gold.
It does beg the question, however, as to why JPM would take this position. I think we can reasonably conclude why. I have no reason to doubt the validity of Grant's anecdote.
Also, to back up Grant's view of the leveraged short positions against gold currently (i.e. in a crisis gold may react differently to 2008) here is the following from ZH this morning:
