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Federal regulators approved part of the pending Cabela’s multi-billion dollar merger with Bass Pro Shops Wednesday, sending its share prices up more than 14 percent in after hours trading.

With the Federal Reserve’s green light on Cabela’s sale of its consumer credit financing arm — World’s Foremost Bank — to Synovus Financial Corp, out of the way, the $5 billion buyout deal can proceed.

Bass Pro Shops bought Cabela’s in October for $5.5 billion, or $65.50 per share. Later the Missouri-based sporting goods chain restructured the deal for a lower share price of $61.50.

After Cabela’s weak second quarter sales, however, investor analysts cautioned the retailer could be desperate to close the deal, while Bass Pro Shops may see its former competitor’s tumbling stock as a cost-saving opportunity. All eyes turned to the fast-approaching Oct. 3 deadline from the feds to approve the credit sale to Synovus, who will subsequently sell the operation to Capital One, while keeping $1.2 billion in deposits.

Confirming just how little pricing power retailers have, CEO Ed Stack said "we have conducted extensive consumer research, and the customers have told us they feel our prices are not competitive in today's environment" in which everyone is slashing price to capture market share, and as a result the company is "intentionally joining this battle, and we will aggressively be promoting our business to drive market share to our stores and online."

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Having no other choice, Dicks has joined the battle of the "deep discounters", and has also launched a "best price guarantee" in which it promises customers that if they find a lower price on a product, Dick's will match it. Of course, by doing so, the retailer assures that both Dick's and its peers margins and net income shrink even more in the coming quarters.

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Speaking to CNBC, SW Retail Advisors' Stacey Widlitz said that "Dick's is another example of Amazon becoming the new middleman... Here we go down the gross margin rabbit hole just in time for the holidays."

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Meanwhile, as the call went on, there was the following striking admission by the CEO:

"There's a lot of people right now, I think, in retail and in this industry in panic mode. There's been a difficult environment. I think people, I'm not going to speculate what they're thinking, but they seem to be in panic mode with how they're pricing product, and we think it's going to continue to be promotional and at times, irrational going forward."

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Just in case the message was not clear the first time, there was more panic: "People need to get rid of the inventory, and then some people are panicked as to what's going to happen with their business from a growth standpoint."

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And then, to top it off, just a little more: "What's going on in the marketplace right now is that it's just very promotional, almost panicked in some cases, I think, especially in the hunt, fish categories. There's a lot of inventory in the pipeline, and people need to move it out, and it's going to continue to be promotional until this inventory gets moved out of the pipeline"

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Finally, one can't possibly use the word "panic" 4 times in a conference call without also adding the occasional "perfect storm", and sure enough:

"So I think it's just a perfect storm right now in retail, and I think sporting goods is in the center of it right now. There'll be further consolidation. We're seeing Gander Mountain closing right now. We'll see what happens with some other retailers, but it's a perfect storm right now. We're not particularly happy that we're in it."