Source: MetalMiner IndX

Prices have been on a slide since the summer, most notably in recent weeks, in spite of continued high iron ore and other raw material costs maintaining pressure on steel makers’ margins. The slide in prices seems highest among basic materials like billet and less pronounced in products like CR coil and sheet sold more on contract and less on the spot market.Please read the complete article at MetalMiner.

Macrobusiness.com.au investigates the relationship on iron ore futures and swaps.

The economist published this stopwatch comparison recently.

An avalanche of negative and critical comments about China lately. Below a short collection courtesy of John Hickey .

Another China hard landing warning - Here's Gary Shilling warning of deflation and a hard landing in China via BusinessInsider. The violent fall in the copper price in the last week is a sign.

Land protests in China - Gordon Chang writes at WorldAffairsJournal about how Beijing's inability to stop local governments seizing land to sell to developers is causing more and more social instability in China.

More on the Chinese hard landing - Zerohedge says Bank of America/Merrill Lynch's top rated analyst David Cui has warned of a hard landing in China in this presentation pack delivered to clients earlier on Wednesday. Here is the presentation on slideshare.

Chinese hard landing - Societe Generale Asian equity strategist Todd Martin told Bloomberg in this video interview on September 23 that listed property developers in China appear to be going into some sort of meltdown as regulators crack down on their unofficial lending channels and the cheap unofficial money is gone.

Trade tensions growing - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to propose a bill next week that would allow American companies to ask for counterveiling duties against Chinese exports to America because of the overvaluation of the yuan.

China's trusts - This piece via BusinessWeek goes into a bit more depth on the extent of the off-balance sheet and unregulated trust lending sector in China. These trusts sound an awful lot like our finance companies.

Keep an eye on SHIBOR rates.

Visitors view a group of portraits of politicians on display at the Jin Businessmen Collection exhibition in Taiyuan, in north China's Shanxin province  (Stringer/AFP/Getty Images).

Further images from the recent Big Picture post gives a glimpse of daily life in parts of China, documented by wire photographers from the Associated Press, Reuters and Getty.