I find it annoying, if not fraudulent. Whenever the economy slows down or even crashes, some people start suggesting to buy gold as crisis-proof investments and of course, there are other people, following this ill advice, loosing money even more.
I seriously suspect that there is a method behind this. A game, played by financial jugglers that revolves around scaring people, looking for security, into buying their reserves at inflated prices, by trumpeting around that the global market will collapse soon.