In a rather unexpected move, AOL is buying social networking site Bebo for $850 million in cash. For weeks there had been rumors that Bebo was looking for either an acquisition or new financing but no one anticipated AOL stepping in. Bebo has 40 million members and 80 million unique users all of which AOL will benefit from. AOL’s acquisition comes at a perfect time as AOL completes its transition from an online access company to an ad-funded content and now bigger online community player.

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Gold futures hit $1,000 an ounce for the first time. The sinking dollar and record crude oil prices have gold skyrocketing. Crude hit a record $110.70 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after earlier rising to a new trading record of $111. Until the Feds get inflation under control Gold and Oil are going nowhere but up from here.

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Google’s long-anticipated acquisition of online ad service DoubleClick is coming to a close. The $3.1 billion deal just completed after nearly a year of regulatory wrangling. This new addition is expected to turn the Internet search leader into an even more powerful marketing vehicle that’s fueled by better insights about consumers.

Look out Microsoft and Yahoo… it might be best just to resolve the love/hate courtship to prevent Google from further gains in the race for Internet advertising dominance.

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Cramer has gone on the record as saying, “defense stocks are as strong as ever and as cheap as ever” If John McCain makes it to the White House he believes you want to be in the defensive stocks. Cramer’s list includes:

Lockheed Martin (LMT), Northrup Grumman (NOC), General Dynamics (GD), L-3 Communications (LLL) and Raytheon (RTN)

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Since everything she touches turns to gold, it is no wonder why Oprah has Cramer’s vote. Oprah has joined forces with Discovery Holdings (The Discovery Channel) to launch her own network. With DISCA trading 7% lower than when Cramer first backed it…looks like a good time to back up the truck on a stock that has many catalysts.

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Yahoo extended the deadline for nominating candidates to its board fearing that Microsoft would nominate its own member to the board in an attempt to push the deal through. Yahoo had given itself more time to search for a white knight to help it fight off an unwanted takeover bid from Microsoft. There are current talks with AOL but as seen in 2005 those attempts have failed once before due to issues related to Time Warner’s continued ownership in AOL

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