Economics: Big Business: Sellouts, buyouts, mergers, acquisitions, discards continue in USA and Canada

Has Daimler-Benz successfully dumped Chrysler yet? Has the inflated bid of mammoth venture-capital / holding companyCerebrus been accepted by D-B? Altho United Auto Workers have accepted the new owner, what about Chrysler's large operations and many thousands of workers in Canada who belong to the vociferous Canadian Auto Workers? Remember that the bid by Canadian auto-parts maker, Magna was turned down earlier by Daimler, and Cerebrus would come into its Canadian ownership h+ly suspect.

Has the swallow-up of ABN Amro (Dutch) by Barclays (UK) been concluded? And what of ABN Amro's attempt to dump its American subsidiary LaSalle in which Barclays isn't interested and Bank of America is--but which the anti-Barclays consortium (Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis, Santander) wants as a wedge-holding to leverage itself better into the American financials market?

What about Rupert Murdoch's News Corp attempted purchase of Wall Street Journal (2nd largest newspaper in USA, after USA Today)? Has Sam Zell finally got ahold of Chicago Tribune (where a partial workers-ownership scheme is a feature of the deal) and Los Angeles Times that goes along with the Tribune? Spinning off the Chicago Cubs to whomever in September? Reuters has accepted the buyout offer by Canadian corporation (competing with Bloomberg.com) Thomson Corp's $17bil buyout offer--but will regulators rubber-stamp the deal?, asks MarketWatch.

Has Alcoa (USA) gobbled up Alcan (Canada)?