A canary in the mine
Norsk Hydro Profit Drops 87% on Power, Metal Prices (Bloomberg).

At first glance it seems strange that aluminium prices are going down. Indeed, the article is rather vague on this. Evidently the demand is only weakened in America and Europe, where Hydro has its traditional markets. Increased demands in the developing world seems set to keep raw material costs rising. I am not sure how long that will last, but any economic sea change that causes the price of ore to fall will probably collapse the price of the finished product even more. It shall be interesting to see if China, India and their local partners will really continue to grow at a brisk speed if America falls into recession. They may have enough internal demand to keep up production, but do they have the financial strength to do so? These nations have primitive capital markets by our standards. There isn't much wealth among the populace (pensions funds, for instance, which are gigantic in the US, are barely noticeable in the developing world for obvious reasons).