Paul Kedrosky over at Infectious Greed has one of those graphs where truly the saying "a picture is a worth a thousand words" speaks volumes. It truly is amazing how China dwarfs everyone - they are doing 10x more than any peer. In fact if I eyeball it, if you add every other country in the world together as one entity; it appears China would be consuming more. As I keep repeating, this economy is like an out of control Ferrari racing on oil slick mountain roads. How to keep control of the steering while is not something I'd wish on anyone.

(click to enlarge)


One name I've followed for a long time, is Mexican cement maker Cemex (CX) which is one of the world's giants (#3 in the world). Unfortunately they are so intertwined with the US market, the stock has been a disaster for a while. I was getting excited about 6 weeks ago, as the technical condition of the chart began to improve, and it looked like a breakout was happening, but just like that, the chart snapped. However, they do not seem to have major Chinese exposure.

• Cemex, the world's number-three cement maker, cut its 2008 forecast for pre-tax earnings to $5.3 billion on Monday, battered by the weak U.S. housing market and a slowdown in key European markets
• "We continue to face a difficult economic environment in the United States with construction falling more than originally anticipated," Chief Financial Officer Rodrigo Trevino said in a statement.
• Cemex, the top building materials company in the United States, had forecast 2008 earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $5.6 billion. "We now expect EBITDA for 2008 of about $5.3 billion," Trevino added.
• For Cemex, which competes globally with Switzerland's Holcim (HOLN) and France's Lafarge (LAFP), the impact of the U.S. housing crisis comes as Cemex increased its market share through last year's $16 billion acquisition of Rinker, which had 80 percent of its operations in the United States.
• "We now expect domestic cement volume in the United States to decrease by around 12 percent, ready-mix volume to decrease by about 21 percent and aggregates volumes to decrease by around 20 percent for the full year 2008," Cemex said.