The Commodities Boom Is Dead. Long Live the Commodities Boom.

What's going on with BHP Billiton? The world's biggest miner bid for a share in a Chilean copper mine this year and is exploring for offshore petroleum in Australia and the Gulf of Mexico. Isn't the commodities super-cycle meant to be over?

One way of thinking about it is to take a trip to your local supermarket. Its owners probably purchased a lot of steel, concrete and bricks while it was being built. Now the doors are open, they're buying stuff that shoppers use every day: Food to fill their bellies, gasoline to fuel their cars, aluminum foil to wrap their lunch, electronic goods wired with copper, and stainless steel cutlery alloyed with nickel. Similarly, the U.S. used up a lot of gravel, cement, and asphalt to build the Interstate Highway system. Once that was completed, the main beneficiaries were the oil companies powering the cars using it.