It's truly amazing that she not only gets paid for this, but that she gets multiple links for this post.

Banality rulz.

You've got to admire an incisive mind like that.

BTW oil economist James Hamilton has a really excellent post on the subject of rising commodity prices.

The point of her post was that nobody knows yet many are making daily predictions. The market is acting irrational so there is no good way to collect facts and make predictions.

As Hamilton points out it is more about the dollar than oil supplies and consumer demand. I find it interesting there is so much cash out looking for a safe place to park for a while. The minute they start getting burned we could see some panic selling as they flee commodities.

I do know I'd like to slap the s@#t out of some speculators since my diesel truck fleet is eating up fuel no matter what the price.

I feel strongly all ways.

Depends on the commodity. Food prices are rising due to a perfect storm. Drought in several food exporting nations, increasing demand from rising prosperity in India and China, and last but not least the greens (euro and US) demand for bio fuels. There is huge demand and decreasing supplies and a dropping dollar, prices for food commodities are going to go up. Looking at supply/demand and stocks-use ratios for various commodities, they are at historic lows and then we get a supply shock as well as demand growth, something has to give which is prices going up. Put that together with the feds lower US dollar policy and congress' rampant spending and my guess is that prices are going to go up for longer, especially for crops subject to any adverse weather to come in the next few months in the US midwest. mpw280

All three are indisputably true. The questions are, When and in which order?

Old joke, Alex. Very old.