peHUB First Read

* Brad Feld: Board meeting lessons from the Supreme Court

* Buyout blackball? Why private equity is having such a hard time getting into bank deals.

* What lessons can be drawn from the Bear Stearns aquittals? Mark Gimein says it’s that white dollar defendants should sit down and shut up.

* Morning Call: U.S. futures point lower, London opens flat, European shares stay put, the Nikkei slips and Hong Kong loses 1.01%.

* Four stages of private equity fund life.

* Zynga CEO Mark Pincus discusses the Playfish acquisition by EA.

* As we wait to see if TPG Capital partners with American Airlines for a stake in Japan Airlines, Shasha Dai runs down TPG’s hits and misses in the airline space.

* Tweet of the Day: @parislemon: “Here’s the problem with responding to emails: People respond back”

* Morgan Stanley CFO Colm Kelleher is the latest to jump on the “resurgent M&A market in 2010” bandwagon.

* Distressed companies still aren’t seeing green shoots when it comes to securing financing. 

* WSJ pretends to have a scoop today about Bain Capital bidding over $1 billion for Bellsystem24, the Japanese telemarketer being sold by Citi. I say “pretends,” because my colleague Megan Davies first reported the news last week.

* The Sacramento Bee keeps investigating Al Villalobos’ ties to CalPERS, and brings PCG’s Chris Bower into the conversation.

* Speaking of CalPERS, Adam Lashinsky goes on Fox Biz to discuss the system’s liquidity problems. Particular kudos to Adam for knocking down Stuart Varney’s thesis (and implied outrage) about CalPERS being on the verge of requiring a bailout: