Time for Borders (BGP) and Barnes & Noble (BKS) to merge?

As Doug McIntyre recently pointed out on BloggingStocks, there's really no reason to assume that the success Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ: WFMI) had in consummating its acquisition of Wild Oats will have any effect on other deals.

But it's still fun to to speculate, and The Detroit News is doing just that: Is a merger of struggling book retailers Barnes & Noble Inc. (NYSE: BKS) and Borders Group Inc. (NYSE: BGP) on the way?

If so, there is only one category that such a merger could be classified under: Two drunken sailors trying to hold each other up. As for anti-trust concerns, how could consumers be effected by the merger of two companies that sell overpriced -- compared to Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) -- books at stores people don't go to anymore?

The Whole Foods deal was about a rapidly growing enterprise trying to expand its empire, and that one made it through the courts. It's hard to imagine regulators stopping the merger of two struggling companies in a contracting industry, even if they wanted to.

Whether such a deal would do anything to help shareholders of the combined entity remains to be seen, if such a deal does indeed come to pass.