This spring China has also been stepping up its purchases of commodities, which are usually bought in dollars.
That could help relieve inflationary pressures that result from European purchases of commodities like crude oil that are priced globally in dollars.
One result, Mr. Weisman writes, is that in 1913, "nearly 95percentt of federal revenues came from the purchase of commodities, which were paid disproportionately by families of modest means".
Many experts also say that donation pledges often do not materialize in the end, or come in the harder-to-tally form of credits for the purchase of commodities.
His thesis is supported by the fact that in 2015-16, as the project funding dried up, government support for the purchase of commodities fell to 8bn shillings, barely half the amount pledged in London.
Capitalism is distinctive, Marx argues, in that it involves not merely the exchange of commodities, but the advancement of capital, in the form of money, with the purpose of generating profit through the purchase of commodities and their transformation into other commodities which can command a higher price, and thus yield a profit.
"If the money is not supporting the purchasing of U.S. commodities, then it will lose support in Congress.
This latter category might include stocks of companies in those industries, limited partnerships in oil pipelines, investments in hedge funds that specialize in these areas, index funds tied to a commodities index and direct purchases of the commodities.
All they are saying is that a long-term investor can diversify by purchasing a basket of commodities to balance out a stock portfolio.
In 2009 alone, the USDA purchased $151 million of commodity pork to prop up failing industrial pork producers.
Equally, there is no discussion of how the large excess capacity of Chinese industry fuels purchases of hard commodities beyond what the country really needs.
