There's a whole lotta shakin' going on in the financial sector these days. The stock market across the board is more up-and-down than a piston at Talladega, the credit crunch has hamstrung the Wall Street wizards and folks are hunkering down, ready for just about anything that comes down the pike.

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Disposable income is fast becoming necessary to the monthly nut, and that doesn't apply to just race fans; it's rampant throughout the garage area in NASCAR's top three series.

On Tuesday, word broke out of Charlotte that two teams were meeting to discuss a merger. Hardly big news these days, because it seems like all but the Big Four are trying to join forces, right?

Well, it's Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates doing the talking, and based on reports from Detroit, it might not be a big hurdle at all.

DEI is staunch Chevrolet, and always has been since the late Dale Earnhardt founded the team. Ganassi Racing has been a Dodge team since 2000, and it has been a NASCAR rule of thumb that Chevrolets, Dodges, Fords and Toyotas don't mix. That is, you can't have half the team in one brand and the other with a different one.

The reasons for this are many, but mainly, it's because the manufacturers aren't real keen on the other side knowing all there is to know about the technical gizmos and whiz-clanks they spend millions of dollars and man-hours developing. The goal of a manufacturer, of course, is to whip all the other manufacturers on a weekly basis, or at least often enough to provide room for all that advertising to work.

But recent reports from Detroit put General Motors and Cerberus Capital, which purchased Chrysler from Mercedes parent Daimler Benz last year, together at the bargaining table to discuss a merger of their own.

Sort of blurs the lines a little bit, doesn't it?

If a merger does happen, it won't happen in time for 2009, either on the financial side between the two automakers or on the NASCAR side, unless Dodge becomes a General Motors brand before Daytona.

The manufacturer side of the sport has been hit hard of late. According to Bloomberg News Service, sales in the United States dropped 32 percent last month to land as the lowest monthly total since 1991.

GM sales plunged 45 percent, Ford fell 30 percent and even Toyota slid 23 percent. Chrysler LLC was down 35 percent.

"If you adjust for population growth, it's the worst sales month in the post-World War II era'' for the industry, Mike DiGiovanni, GM's chief sales analyst, said on a conference call with investors and the media. "Clearly we're in a dire situation."

Analysts do not expect the industry to show signs of recovery in the first half of 2009, either, which can be taken two ways. Either GM and Chrysler merge to form one auto company, cutting overhead and redundancy in hopes of streamlining production, sales efforts and the like, or they stay separate and go it alone.

If the light hits it just right, you'll see that is the same philosophy being employed in the NASCAR garage these days.

Mergers and outside investors are the rage now in the Cup garage, with Michael Waltrip Racing, Gillett Evernham Motorsports, Petty Enterprises and Roush Fenway Racing all going the investor route in the past 18 months.

Merger talks among those who have not are commonplace; DEI has talked with Petty and others, while Ganassi has also talked with Petty and others.

The way the economy is, those are the lone safe havens for anyone not named Hendrick, Gibbs, Childress or Roush. They say on Wall Street that "the trend is your friend," and a whole lot of people in the garage are looking for a friend right now.

Sponsorship is a key factor as well. Should the Ganassi-DEI merger bear fruit in the form of a four-car team, there are just two full-time sponsors in the mix: Bass Pro Shops on Martin Truex Jr.'s No. 1 car and Target Stores on the No. 41 that Reed Sorenson will step out of at season's end. Ganassi has a half-season schedule set with Wrigley's for Juan Montoya and the No. 42, while DEI is seeking a backer for Aric Almirola's No. 8.

Whatever the future holds for this potential merger or the potential GM-Chrysler joining, the future of the NASCAR we know is going to change one way or another. Ford has already cut its factory support for all non-Sprint Cup applications, and Chevrolet is looking at its outlay in that regard as well.

The potential, down the road, is for very limited factory support at best, and no factory backing at the worst.