Gold Silver miners lagging bullion, for how long?

Since the 2008 financial crises, the Gold and Silver miners have lagged the bullion price quite a bit over the last several years.

Here is a 5 year daily chart of the (evil) ETF GLD and the Van Eck Gold Miners ETF GDX. 

Over the last 5 years, GLD has returned 164%, the GDX has returned 45%.   You can see that the GDX started to diverge from the gold price at the end of 2007, crashed in 2008 and has not recovered to the same level as the bullion price.

The top 10 holding for the GDX are:

A full list of Gold / Silver miners can be downloaded at the VanEck website.   Will the Gold / Silver miners ever catch up to the bullion price? (As far as year over year returns?)  I believe that they will, but we all need to be patient. I know most people are tired of hearing that and I am as well, especially because I am a holder of select mining companies. (Long)

One theory is that when Gold is in the latter part of stage 3, there will no longer be any physical Gold or Silver to purchase.  If people still want to invest in this market, they can with the miners. They are essentially companies with money in the ground, it's a matter of extracting it.  One could invest in an ETF, but by the late 3 stage of this bull market, the ETF's may have a significant downside divergence from the phyiscal metal prices. (Which may keep people away from investing in them)

With Gold trading above $1650 and Silver above $30, the miners should continue to produce outstanding quarterly earnings reports. 2012 may be the breakout year for the bullion miners.... time will tell.