China

 I've addressed lagging commodity prices in many posts on this blog and although it's not entirely clear why agricultural commodities have been flat we can definitely point to the slowdown in China for the weakness in industrial metals.  Today 63% of global demand for iron ore comes from China. They consume 43% of the global supply of aluminum.  For Copper it is 38%.

Here's the Goldman Sachs Industrial metals Index which tracks copper, zinc, aluminum, nickel:

(click on chart for larger image)

What's encouraging about the chart is that in spite of the obvious drop off in demand for these metals from China the index is basically treading water, trading between two Fibonacci retracement levels.  Now, if it breaks below the 61.8% level it would signal a deeper contraction in world economic growth, particularly in China.  I don't believe we will see this.