With cash-strapped companies coming cup-in-hand to their equally cash-strapped governments, the world over is looking for Warren Buffett-sized checkbooks to help ease the credit crunch.

Increasingly, the world is looking to China and its $1.9 trillion in reserves.

Should China whip open its gigantic checkbook to bailout the global financial system?

Does it even want to?

China’s been burned before with its investments in the U.S. financial sector. It has a 9.9% stake ($5 billion) in Morgan Stanley (MS:NYSE) that has been pummeled by the industry-wide downturn. And some Chinese leaders believe that the U.S. and Western Europe should clean up their own mess.

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News from Asia Times Online has a tiny Caspian county rivalling Mother Russia for regional energy dominance.

In an announcement on October 13, British consultant group Gaffney, Cline & Associates valued Turkmenistan’s natural gas resources for its new Yoloten-Osman field at 4 trillion cubic meters… at least.

On the high side of the estimate, this field could contain as much as 14 trillion cubic meters.

The U.S. consumes 604 billion cubic meters a year, so this is a massive find! It’s also five times the size of Turkmenistan’s previous favorite field.

This new reserve estimate came as a big shock to Russia’s Gazprom (GAZP:Russia), who’d picked up a giant contract with Turkmenistan’s state-owned energy company, Turkmengaz. The contract, signed on July 25 earlier this year, meant Turkmenistan would export 50 billion cubic meters a year to Russia through 2009. Gazprom needs these exports to meet its contracts with Europe, as the company exports about two-thirds of its total production.

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Yesterday was a lovely day for me.

I was asked to speak at the Community College of Baltimore County for a group called SIFE, which stands for Students In Free Enterprise. I first spoke at the Catonsville Campus, and it was like coming home.

I practically grew up on that campus. My mother is a teacher there, and I’ve spent countless years in daycare and summer camps. I know the paths in the surrounding woods like the back of my hand.

I was honored to be introduced by my old business teacher, Mr. Larry Aaronson. All the teachers there were like family to me, and I reconnected with people I haven’t seen for 12 years. Needless to say, I wanted to impress everyone.

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No doubt everyone who wasn’t net-short the market has a smile on his face today.

Today’s rally is some welcome news, especially for those companies and countries who have been unfairly sucked down by the “Black Hole” I talked about last week.

Now, I’m not gonna say this is the end of the downside global markets have been experiencing over the past weeks and months. I don’t have a crystal ball, and I don’t read Tarot. And in a market where everyone’s looking for “the answer” I don’t want to tell you something I’m not absolutely sure of myself.

Instead, we’ll look at some of the best analysis we can and make some educated decisions about what to do next in Taipan Trader.

In the mean time, let’s take a look at what this recent upswing has done to emerging markets.

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