Your comment regarding physical PM is one that I fully agree with. Here in the Netherlands and Belgium, I still don't see an enormous craze for gold or silver. It is coming, true, but very, very slowly. People are beings that like to have lives that follow patterns. Humans have comfort zones and hate to step out of their comfort zones.

Generations have lived with the idea that you study when you're young, so that you can get a job in your twenties, then find a husband or wife, get married, buy a house and have babies. When your children are anywhere in between 18 and 35 (depending on the country you live in), they will move out and get their own house so you can work a couple of years more until you turn 65 (again depending on the country you live in) and you can retire.

That, my friend, will all change in the 21st century. At one point it will become clear that the money that now rules our lives is not such a reliable IOU anymore. That point will change everything. Such situations have occurred on a smaller scale in Argentina, Zimbabwe, Weimar and numerous other places in history. But it never happened on a global scale. The best advice I can give anyone, even better than buying physical gold or silver, is to stop being a slave to this consumption society we live in. The fewer material things you own, the less vulnerable you are. I'm not a particularly religious person, but I do believe that there will be richer times ahead of us (spiritually, not financially) if we just get through this turbulent era, in which everything in life is built on more, more and more.

Sorry if I'm a little off topic here, but I always like to focus on the bigger picture, rather than staring at how many IOU's one can get for an imaginary oz of gold.