Johnc

Who's to Blame for the Commodities Boom?

Wow! Some of the comments here are scary!
Speculators were not invented in the last 100 years. The process of price discover goes much further back than that. I would argue that the Government should work against markets getting "cornered" but other than illegal short term manipulation, the government has no business telling the market what the "right" prices are. If ETF's accellerate this price discovery, allow me to get some hedge against inflation and sends signals around the world about the money to be made by planting certain crops, developing promising new energy sources, re-engineering products to protect gross margins and a message to Central Banks about how we feel about their potentially inflationary policies....well, I'm not sure I see what the problem is.
Economic dislocation will be the result. No denying it. Buggy whip makers, mainframe computer manufacturers and coal miners in England offer just a few well known examples of economic dislocation that happened well before commodity ETF's came on the scene.