On a day when global markets were routed amid quantitative signs of investor panic, there were more than a few strange sights on Monday. But perhaps none stranger or more sobering than CNBC’s famously bullish analyst Jim “Mad Money” Cramer interrupting middle America’s morning coffee with a warning to sell its stocks. Right. Now.

“Whatever money you may need for the next five years, please take it out of the stock market right now, this week,” he told The Today Show. You could almost hear the morning coffee spit-takes in kitchens and living rooms across the nation.

Or, as the FT’s Alphaville blog put it: “Capitulation, BOOYAH.”

But perhaps Cramer’s ominous sell recommendation is a contrarian indicator that the tide is soon to turn? Barry Ritzholtz of the Big Picture blog wrote: “DAMN if that headline doesn’t smell like a giant buy signal. The market down 30%, the VIX spiking to 56, and Cramer giving a panicky SELL on TV this morning. … We are putting a toe in the water here.”

Bristol-Myers decided against holding a protracted bidding war for ImClone Systems and instead decided to let Eli Lilly & Co win the biotech company without much of a fight.

Instead, Bristol-Myers decided to cash in its 16.6-percent stake in ImClone for $1 billion and walk away.

Bristol said there were advantages to letting go of its hopes to acquire ImClone. The proceeds from the sale of its ImClone stake would put Bristol in an “excellent position” to make other acquisitions. Bristol said it would weigh the purchase of companies or specific products, as well as forging licensing deals.

Bristol said it would make the “right moves at (the) right time.”

Given the current credit market conditions, Bristol may have been wise to walk away. Concerns about pending deals rose after tobacco company Altria Group Inc said last week that it may hold off on closing its $10.4 billion purchase of smokeless tobacco-maker UST Inc until early January, at the request of its lenders.

The spreads on several high-profile deals remain wide, with InBev/Anheuser-Busch at 9 percent and Bank of America/Merrill at 14 percent.

Even ImClone’s stock is trading at a discount to Eli Lilly’s $70 per share offer as investors have concerns about Eli Lilly’s ability to raise $2 billion to $3 billion in debt to help finance the deal, traders said.

Eli Lilly Chief Financial Officer Derica Rice, however, told analysts this morning that “we feel very comfortable at this stage with our ability to finance the transaction.”

But not everyone is convinced.

“Normally a tender offer like this would be able to close in 40 days, yet they are saying it will close in the fourth quarter or early ‘09. Why the uncertainty?” said one arbitrageur who declined to be named.

It seemed like the natural order of things had returned for a short while last week. Wells Fargo had outbid Citigroup to take over Wachovia, and as an added treat, they did not plan to tap government funds to do it. Apparently caught unawares, the jilted suitor sued saying its exclusivity agreement had been broken. If the parties had had a signed merger deal, rather than just an exclusive agreement to talk, Wachovia would have been obliged to pay Citi some kind of break-up fee. But the waters are murkier this time. So instead, the now fully engaged Federal Reserve is acting as broker in what has become a frantic legal spat between the banks.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Fed is pushing the two banks to compromise by potentially carving up Wachovia between them. Having already decided a purchase of Wachovia is an issue that has significance for the stability of the financial system, the Fed continues to view resolving the confusion over who is buying one of the nation’s biggest banks as important, a Treasury source told us, adding that discussions were continuing late last night.

What could motivate the Fed to intrude where the free market seemed to be working so well? Citi shares saw their first substantive rally in a long while when their Wachovia deal was announced. It was getting a sweet deal, with government backing, that was seen as a game changer for the mammoth bank. Without that deal, the Fed may be more worried about what to do about Citi than whether a Wells, Wachovia deal makes sense.

Who will win the battle for Wachovia? Place your bets in the news prediction website Hubdub:

What happens to Wachovia?

Deals of the day:

* BNP Paribas has scooped up Fortis’s assets in Belgium and Luxembourg to become the euro zone’s biggest deposit bank after a weekend of frantic talks with the authorities in the two countries eager to stem a cash drain on Fortis and Dexia banks.

* The Australian unit of H.J. Heinz will buy food producer Golden Circle in a deal valuing the canned fruit and juice producer at about A$288 million ($220 million), the companies said.

* British outsourcing group Xchanging and its Mauritius unit have made an open offer to acquire 20 percent of Cambridge Solutions at 81.11 rupees a share, according to a notice in a newspaper.

* Thai steel firm G Steel said that Japanese trading house Mitsui & Co planned to acquire a stake in it.

* Hungary’s MOL has won 21.7 percent of Croatian oil group INA in a public bid, raising its stake to 46.7 percent, but it may still gain a majority as final results will be known only later this week.