No word from Bill again today - but no worries, we received an equally insightful note from friend Sean Brodrick...

"Refineries east of Houston may be down for a month after Rita, they say. I'm not panicking. Are you panicking? Nah, why would we panic when all these refineries are shut when they should be making heating oil? Know why I'm not panicking? Because I live in Florida, and I don't need heating oil. Anyone who needs heating oil, though, on the cusp of a potentially cold, cold winter, better buy an extra pair of long johns.

"Seriously, I doubt all those refineries will be out of service for a month. That's what they said after Katrina, and there are only four refineries still out due to Katrina as of now.

"But, really, those refineries that are out of commission (temporarily) aren't making heating oil. And some heavily accented individual was on CNBC this morning (a heavy accent always lends gravitas to what they're
saying) and he said natural gas is going to $20 by Christmas. Is that true? I don't know, but I'm glad I don't live in Baltimore. Or Chicago. It gets colder than a witch's left you-know-what in a brass bra in Chicago.

"Oh, and unleaded gas prices? To the moon, Alice! Maybe not this week. But if they don't get those refineries back online soon, it will happen soon. Little sympathy from Canada on that one though - they're already paying the equivalent of roughly $6 a gallon.

"Anyway, the White House has a plan. President Bush has asked us all to voluntarily conserve. This is big switch from when VP Dick Cheney said:

"Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy." But that was donkey's years and a flurry of hurricanes ago - 2001, in fact. Now, they're talking conservation. Now, they're saying Rita didn't mess up the oil industry too much. Too bad we're smart enough to know that's a flat-out lie. Question is, when will the thermostats in the room-temperature airheads on CNBC switch on?

"If Rita didn't mess up Energy Alley, why is Bush offering to release more oil from the SPR? And how about that plan to build up the SPR, has that gone by the wayside? Do we have bigger problems now? Are we frolicking grasshoppers at the onset of winter, wishing we'd stored up our seeds like the ants, instead of buying big-ass HUMMERs, which looked so good in a TV commercial at the time. But man, that HUMMER is sweet. It accents our bling-bling so well.

"So I'm not panicking. Are you? Nah."

*** "The other night, a Canadian radio host asked me whether Canada would catch pneumonia if the United States caught a housing crash-induced consumer spending cold," reported Dan Denning.

"'Not as quickly as you might think,' I answered.

"For now, the United States and Canada are essentially trading partners with one another. But Chinese strategy and American trade policy are straining those relations. And in case you didn't notice, Chinese President (not popularly elected, of course) Hu Jintao was in Canada to make nice with our neighbors to the north and remind them that if the Americans were making it hard for Canada to export its resource bounty south, the Canadians ought to look East.

"China, as ever, is going about the business of meeting its resource needs. But do the Canadians see a Chinese bogeyman in all this grand strategy? Doesn't look like it. Conservative MP Monte Solberg was quoted in The [Toronto] Globe and Mail as saying, 'It's pretty obvious that if the Americans seem to have gone soft on the whole concept of free trade, we just have to find other markets for our products, and China is going, of course, to be a major market for these products.'

"Solberg also pointed out that Canada needed an 'aggressive strategy' for opening up the Chinese market. Sounds like the Chinese have beaten them to the punch, while the Americans remain oblivious to it all.

"The Money Migration is revving up."

*** Last week The Times of India reported Bill Gates will visit Chennai, India in December. He was invited to meet with the Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Dayanidhi Maran to work on a solution to spread computer literacy around the country.

Sounds all well and good, but Gates is reported to have a very specific goal for India - a computer in every village.

Seems like a tough task if you ask your Daily Reckoning editors. India has 1.06 billion people - but 731 million of those are dirt poor. Many living on $1 a day. Still that isn't stopping Microsoft from entering this massive market.

Gates already has offices in Bangalore and in Hyderabad - the equivalents of Silicon Valley here in the States. Certainly seems like he is ramping up for a reason. Gates is no fool. And our resident Indian specialist, Sala Kannan, believes she knows exactly why Gates (and a lot of other huge American corporations are spending billions to enter the Indian market right now).

We'll tell you more, dear reader, in the coming weeks. But know this...

It has nothing to do with IT, outsourcing or any of the other "bubble" sector you have been reading about in the mainstream press. Stay tuned...

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing.  For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.