Rising commodity prices have allowed a class of super-rich, from Middle Eastern potentates to Russian oligarchs, to splash out on converting full-sized airliners into private jets.

ECONOMIST: Corporate jets

But some economists argue that Brazil is the beneficiary of a structural shift, in which the industrialisation of Asia and the rise of a new middle class in the developing world will keep commodity prices high.

ECONOMIST: Brazil

Once again, just as the consensus was to be in the commodity asset class it backfired for the moment as the contagion of a globe slowdown that cannot predicted has taken its victims, the speculative interest that saw copper, gold, silver, oil as sure things.

FORBES: Silver Down 30%, Gold Off 11% As Panic Hits Precious Metals