Search:

NEW YORK—Back in January, economists were calling food and energy expensive. They didn’t know what expensive was.

In the just-ended first half of 2008, commodities prices soared well past most forecasts. Corn shot up 66 percent and soybeans gained 31 percent. Meanwhile, crude oil and retail gasoline prices spiked about 46 percent since Jan. 1.

The surge in food and energy prices has been a boon to many banks and hedge funds who have used commodities trading to turn a profit during the worst credit crisis in decades. But fortunes made on the trading floors of New York, C...