As I watched the closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, I came away from the entire event with a sense of awe. The Chinese did a wonderful job, and their attention to detail was beyond impressive.

My takeaway from this massive show of detail and perfection quickly turned to the build out of China as a nation. Unless one has their heads in the sand, no one can deny that China will be one of the best, if not the best, economic superpower of the 21st century.

While the U.S. standard of living continues to decline, China's continues to grow. U.S. companies have fallen over one another to close up shop here in the U.S., and have moved production and manufacturing facilities to the Golden Dragon.

Investing is more about the sixth sense, gut feel, and growth, than it is a patriotic belief that U.S. companies and politicians will do the right thing. The "right thing" among these two begins and ends with how much money they can make. As it currently stands, the biggest untaped consumer in the world is not in the U.S, but in China.

Last week, oil rallied +$5.62/bbl on Thursday, and then sold off -$6.59/bbl on Friday. If you were watching closely, energy stocks rallied sharply on Thursday, but did not give back all of the gains despite a massive sell-off the next day.

Now that the Olympics are over, it will be interesting to see if the interventionists have enough muscle to drive oil prices below the 200-day Moving Average at 110/bbl before the November elections. I will also be watching the weekly oil inventory reports to see if China resumes their purchases of crude. If the inventory numbers magically show increased demand, then we'll know China is back in the game.

Speaking of oil, VP Dick Cheney will make a trip to Georgia and Azerbaijan in early September. Cheney is the point man for the major oil barons here in the U.S.. As I have said before, the U.S. administrations interests in Georgia are about oil, and not human life. Russia strongly opposes the plans of U.S. oil companies routing oil and gas through Georgia and Turkey instead of Russian pipelines.

The situation is much more complicated than the spin coming out of Washington. Just remember, it's all about oil. Higher oil prices are killing the U.S. economy, and is adding to the pain in the housing and credit crisis. Lower oil prices would put more cash in consumers pockets which would allow them to payoff debt, and create surplus cash for discretionary purchases.