In fact, most major Wall Street houses if they do cover gold lump it into either the basic materials sector (mining stocks) or in the "hard assets" category, which mostly covers commodities and real estate.
The new subsidy, called shallow-loss protection, would act as a free insurance policy to cover commodity farmers against small drops in revenue.
At a price of $11.5 billion a year, its titles covered commodity programs, conservation, loan programs, rural development and research, among others.
All food companies, including lower-cost private-label manufacturers, have had to raise prices to cover commodity prices.
Even in a recession, demand for these inexpensive items is sufficient to allow the company to raise prices enough to cover commodity cost increases.
But banks may not be willing to lend money out in massive quantities to cover leveraged commodity bets.
The McDonald's Corporation posted a 2.1 percent increase in fourth quarter profit on Monday and said it would raise prices this year to cover rising commodity costs.
The Goldman index covers the commodities universe, from crops to livestock to metals to energy.
At The Financial Times, Mr. Gowers covered agriculture, commodities and the Middle East.
The fastest-growing derivatives, for example, were not covered by commodity-futures laws, and the fastest-growing subprime lenders were not banks and thus not federally regulated.The swing back towards more activist government began under George Bush, partly in response to new crises.
