The Commodity Binge Decade May Lead to Big Hangover

IT WAS only a decade or so ago that Scotland was hit by the “Great Drain Robbery”, the disappearance of 50 manhole covers in Fife. It gave an inkling of the emergence of a new era in commodity markets, spurred by insatiable demand from China. Scrap-metal prices—and so scrap-metal thefts—soared. Africa was over-run by Chinese engineers; Australia elected a Mandarin-speaking prime minister; and emerging markets from Argentina to Zambia relished the rising values of their farmland and mines. The boom was fanned by a weak American dollar, the currency in which most stuff that comes out of the ground is priced.