Just What Commodities Are Good For

Commodities! Huh! What are they good for? Absolutely something!

Cynics have long accused Dow Jones editors of trying to salt their benchmark industrial average with hoped-for winners.

It wasn't so long ago, for example, that Bethlehem Steel (BS Quote), now headed to the recycling furnaces of Chapter 11, was a Dow stock, as was Venator (Z Quote). Sometimes this alleged strategy backfires, as it did two years ago with the inclusion of Microsoft (MSFT Quote) and Intel (INTC Quote) near the end of the long tech boom. ...