peHUB First Read

* Top 10 reasons why entrepreneurs hate lawyers

* Barry Ritholtz rips apart a NYT piece about a recent lack of Silicon Valley IPOs.

* Rick Carew: “The world’s biggest private-equity firms are coming to the conclusion that they need local money to compete for deals in China. But new rules being circulated by some Chinese officials suggest local-currency funds won’t prove the panacea for all that ails private equity there.”

* Morning Call: U.S. futures mixed ahead of Citigroup earnings, London falls early, European shares retreat, the Nikkei loses 0.8% and Hong Kong shares rebound.

* Fred Wilson: Somewhere between M&A and VC is DST.

* Mark Giemen: P2P lending is much riskier than people think.

* Phineas Barnes: Junior VCs are gatekeepers who add friction to the system

* Author of popular book on gullibility lost 30% of his retirement savings to Bernie Madoff.

* Steve Syre: The Houghton Mifflin situation is a textbook case of debt overload and very bad timing.

* Scott Austin: Beware of VC-backed startups boasting of IPO plans

* Founder Dating: Events for Bay Area entrepreneurs in search of that very special co-founder.

* 2010 investment outlook from CalPERS CIO Joe Dear. This is the second time I’ve seen Dear on CNBC in recent months, and the second time that Maria Bartiromo didn’t ask him anything about the placement agent issue: