Article: What do $4 corn, $12 beans and tulips have in common?(Viewpoint)

CORN, soybeans and tulips are all or were part of commodity bubbles that made people a lot of money at their height but brought unintended consequences when they burst, as all bubbles eventually do.

Believe it or not, one of the first commodity bubbles was tulips, and the latest is, of course, corn due to the demand for ethanol. In between these two, we had rubber and $12 soybeans in the early 1970s.

Make no mistake about it, this ethanol-powered corn bubble will burst, so be careful in making investment decisions based on these high prices. The past can teach us a lot of lessons, or, as my boss in the commodity business warned me, "High prices cure high ...

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