Editor’s note:  The commodities boom has a long way to run, says Dominic Frisby in Money Morning.  Mining companies are pushing steel prices higher and higher. There’s no futures market for iron ore, so speculators aren’t to blame for this one. Mining companies are raising prices because their shipping costs are going up.

Just as it was during the credit crunch, the biggest beneficiary of the next wave of the financial crisis and the ensuing panic will be gold and precious metals.

Has Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke suddenly turned into an inflation fighter? To my knowledge, Bernanke has never before stressed the dollar’s decline, the inflationary dangers it poses and his intention to guard against these as much as he did yesterday.

Thank goodness for MoneyWeek, that’s all I can say. Because, aside from a couple of noble souls at the Daily Telegraph, nobody else in the mainstream media gets it.

In April 2006, Aurelian Resources (CA:ARU) made the gold discovery of the century. It was a once-in-a-lifetime find, the kind most miners can only dream of.

When a commodity or stock breaks out to new highs, as oil has done again this week, it’s extremely unwise to go short, as many are suggesting. I have no doubt, of course, that now I’ve said that in print, it will mark the top of the market.

With the oil price at near-record highs and Shell and BP declaring record profits last week, there are various truckloads of drivel about the oil majors being ruthless profiteers doing the rounds at the moment. But who’s really raking in the money?

I have had a lot of inquiries this week about silver. What’s gone wrong? What’s next? When silver was trading at $13 an ounce late last year, I said we’d see $22-25 by the Spring. We got to $21. Not a bad call. I was hoping for higher. But how typical of silver to frustrate.

If there’s one area of the commodities markets that’s looking extremely cheap right now, I would say it’s uranium. Or rather uranium junior mining companies.