Karim,
> I guess I was wondering if there is other general tuning advice for such
> large table indexes such as increasing statistics, etc.
Well, your index use problem is being explained by Tom, Stephan and Simon;
basically your FKed data types are incompatible for index use purposes so the
system *can't* use an index while loading.
If you're going with the drop/load/recreate option, then I'd suggest
increasing work_mem for the duration. Hmmm ... or maintenance_work_mem?
What gets used for FK checks? Simon?
--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco