As any attentive shopper or driver almost anywhere in the world could tell you, the prices of basic things like food and gasoline have risen faster than inflation in the last five or ten years. In US Dollar terms, prices for all 24 commodities in the most widely traded commodity index fund rose by an average of about 100 percent from 2003 to 2008, for instance. And the pace is not letting up now. Gold rose by 30 percent in 2010, copper by 33%, wheat by 47, corn by 52, cotton by 92, and so on…