This leads to the second point: infrastructure. Such migration, along with the urbanisation and industrialisation of the rapidly developing economies, has prompted increased investment in housing, roads, railways, electricity, and other infrastructure projects. To whatever degree this may have increased or decreased in specific countries during the recession, infrastructure investment is sure to rise in the years to come.

It has been estimated that developing economies alone will invest as much as some $2.25 trillion annually over the next three years to meet infrastructure needs. While decreased consumer demand in the U.S. and Europe will offset some of this, trillions cannot be poured into new infrastructure projects in developing economies without affecting the demand for—and prices of—the commodities and raw materials needed for those projects.

The third critical element in the commodities story is the rapid growth of the global middle class. According to a July 2008, Goldman Sachs (GS) analysis, as many as two billion people may join the ranks of the world's middle class by 2030. As the report points out: "This dwarfs even the 19th-century middle-class explosion in its global scale."