Commodities and commodity stocks are being taken to the woodshed even more vigorously than the market as a whole, most likely because they were the last speculative bubble to roll over (vigorously mixing metaphors). In the carnage, it is easy to lose perspective.

The reality is that natural resources - food, energy, raw materials - are the true limits to growth. We can make more people very easily. It is not so easy to make more oil, for example. The resource is finite, and the cost of discovering new deposits is rising inexorably as explorers must drill deeper or further. As the developing world increases its standard of living, something has to give. Everyone must learn to do more with less. The relative prices of commodities (to labor) will continue to increase.

Be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.