peHUB First Read

* Steven Pearlstein: The myth of small business creation, and what it means for healthcare reform.

* It’s 1994. Should you put all your money in cash or stocks?

* Brandon Watson on if the VC model is dead: “The trouble isn’t so much that associates don’t know what actually constitutes a good business, it’s that they believe that they are uniquely qualified to make that determination… If the associate doesn’t like you, you don’t get through them as a gate keeper.”

* Morning Call: U.S. futures point to mixed open, London flattens, European shares keep falling, the Nikkei falls 2.4% and Chinese shares edge down.

* Michael Lewis on the (AIG) man who crashed the world.

* VC valuations: What went up, has come down.

* Not so fast, Ricketts family. Tribune Co. has reached a second deal to sell the Cubs.

* New study finds that PE-owned firms are as likely to fail as non PE-owned firms, excluding the burdensome leverage variable.

* Gmail is finally out of beta.

* Frontline documentary on the Merrill-BoA merger.

* Favorite tweet from yesterday: @EpicureanDeal: Wait a minute. Isn’t Michael Jackson too big to fail? Somebody alert @nouriel I think we have our exogenous event.

* T. Boone Pickens scales back his wind farm plans. In other energy news, CFO discusses the carbon cap-and-trade impact on M&A.

* Q&A with Jones Day lawyer Bruce McDonald on Obama, antitrust and M&A