The deja vu line from baseball legend Yogi Berra never fails to amuse, like many of his great ones.

Another one apposite here is: “The future ain’t what it used to be” or we pundits could always adapt his “I never said most of the things I said”

Anyway, back to the deja vu thing.

We talk about the GFC, the crash of 2008, as if it came out of the blue.

By contrast, 2007 is frequently – at least by your less-than-humble correspondent – cited as the peak of the commodities boom.

Uranium was going crazy, everyone by then was fully aware that we were witnessing the greatest commodity boom in our lifetimes and the Howard government was making a great job of spending the windfall the moment it came through the door. (All that was missing was Howard repeating Harold Macmillan’s class election line: “You’ve never had it so good”.)

And this writer was warning Outcrop readers not to believe for a moment Kevin Rudd’s “I’m Mr Austerity” campaign pitch.

But a look back at this column in that year shows that all was far from well in the mining and commodities business well over a year before the GFC (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, et al) reared its ugly head.

In many ways, there was the mild sense of unease, just as there is now: copper is tumbling as Chinese credit gets crunched, iron ore looks patchy, the exploration initial public offerings have dried up (not an unalloyed bad thing, mind you) – anyway, you know full well what it’s like out there.

And who can be relaxed with copper touching $US6376.25 per tonne last night, its lowest since July 2010?

And who can be sanguine with gold at a six-month high, attributed to the Ukraine crisis. This may be but I suspect market worries may also be playing a large part.

By September 2007, Outcrop was becoming quite concerned.

The heat was starting to come out of the commodities boom.

There had been big falls in the prices of nickel, zinc and copper.

Nickel was just below $30,000/t – yes, yes, if only that were the case today – but it had come back from having touched $50,000. So that was quite some retreat.

Zinc was cheaper than lead, something until then we had not seen very often but seems common these days – last night in London lead finished at $2037/t and zinc at $1988/t.

The base metals were given a fillip that month, though, by the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates by 0.5%.

Nickel, as a result, had its best day in 19 years, jumping 11% in one session to $34,050/t.

Alas, this is a market remedy not available today – now China’s new credit rules are pushing lower all the industrial metals while the Fed and European Central Bank have used all their ammunition.

By October 2, 2007, the Outcrop space – never reluctant to be a fool rushing in where angels fear to tread – declared: “The speculative era is over. Commodities are now the place for the long-term investor”

Even with short Fed-induced bounce a week earlier, nickel lost 22% of its value that September.

The Baltic Dry Index fell 10% during one week in late September, then another 8.2% in the week of this particular column appearing. (But iron ore and coal were still looking strong, it must be added.)

By November 2007, things were looking even stickier.

Zinc by that time had dropped 47% since January 1. It had hit $4000/t a year earlier – by this time, it was about to test the $2000 level.

Outcrop was suggesting the float mania was at its end. But at least in 2007 there were still a number of companies in the IPO process.

Had a look at the situation today? Just four companies in the IPO process, two of those industrials and the only resources ones being China Mining (with TBA against its list date) and Huayi Resources.

Not exactly a sign of resilience is it?

In fact, come to think it of it, the total absence of a locally run exploration company trying to float is possibly the most sobering of all the portents as to the state of mind of the market.

So, looking back, there were plenty of clues that things were getting tricky. There were already signs that the US and European economies were unwinding.

This time, it may be China that is the focus of worry. Thus 2014 seems to have some chilling similarities with 2007.

If this turns out to be the case, remember where you read it first.