I know there's been much talk about major equipment prices rising at the end of this year but I was wondering if this is still going to happen with fuel and steel prices plummeting.

Where I work, we're anticipating raw materials dropping 10-15% in the first quarter of 2009. We're also seeing shipping prices for containers out of Asia dropping 25-30%.

With this said, does anyone have first hand knowledge of what's going to happen at the beginning of 2009 in regards to tool pricing? I realize this is a little bit of a crystal ball question but many of the price increases we've seen in the last year were attributed to steel and gas prices. Using this reasoning you'd think we'd see the same in the other direction.

Thanks,
Wes