A headline tells us "MillerCoors Will Revamp Jolt." Take a hit of caffeine, folks. That's Sparks, you mean. (Jolt is, of course, the granddaddy of highly caffeinated sodas, but it has never contained alcohol.)

Cerberus Capital Management is now willing to give up partial ownership in Chrysler, which has spurred a renewal of merger talks between it and General Motors, Heidi N. Moore and Jeffrey McCracken report this morning. Cerberus took the initiative to restart the discussions. Congress has pressed Cerberus to pump more money into Chrysler but it has thus far refused, saying the shareholders of its rivals aren't being asked to do the same and that its investment charter prohibits such a move. But it might give away some of its principals' stakes in Chrysler as part of a broader restructuring, giving …

Chrysler may be shutting down production for a month but the marketing machine will keep grinding away, Jean Halliday reports, as the automaker attempts to realign slumping demand with its dealer's inventories. Regional dealer groups will continue to advertise its yearend sale. National launch ads for the Dodge Ram full-size pickup will run through at least the end of the year. Ford, which said yesterday that it will close most of its North American plants for an extra week, until Jan. 12, says it has no plans to change previously planned advertising or media schedules. GM, which announced …

The federal government is expected to approve today new rules banning "unfair and deceptive" practices by credit card companies. When it does so, it will signal a shift in emphasis from educating customers about what they should do to telling companies and customers what they can and cannot do. Bear in mind that Republications are still running the regulatory agencies involved -- the Federal Reserve, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the National Credit Union Administration -- and that the credit card lobby is traditionally among the most powerful in D.C., as Nancy Trejos and Binyamin Appelbaum point out. …

U.S. retail foot traffic fell 17.9% for the week ending Dec. 13, compared with the same week in 2007, according to Chicago-based retail analyst ShopperTrak, but sales were only off by 0.3% for the same period. Plus, traffic was up 16% compared with the week before, with sales up 18%. Consumers, who "weren't able to come in with an entire paycheck," are more focused on price than ever before, Wal-Mart spokeswoman Tara Stewart tells Jaclyn Trop. In addition to toys and electronics, containers for storing food have sold well as more people celebrate at home, she says.

Apple's announcement that Phil Schiller, its SVP of worldwide marketing, will take Steve Jobs' place on the stage at next month's Macworld conference has wags wagging about who might succeed him somewhere down the road should he need to be succeeded which, of course, is nothing but speculation. But let's play the game with the Merc's Troy Wolverton. Schiller, 48, has 17 years of marketing and management experience at Apple and is very tuned in to its culture, says Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry. But he's weak on operations and product design and, as Enderle Group's Rob Enderle …