peHUB First Read

* China’s great wall of private equity 

* Tom Hicks: “Liverpool FC will be the most profitable investment I have ever made.”

* An argument in favor of carry-on bag fees (no, the author is not employed by Spirit Air)

* Morning Call: U.S. futures point higher, London rises early, European shares pare gains, the Nikkei dips and Hong Kong shares climb.

* The chairman of Alibaba.com has set up a private equity firm.

* Andrew Ross Sorkin: “What purpose does a synthetic C.D.O., which contains no actual mortgage bonds, serve for the capital markets, and for society?”

* Steve Jobs: “We do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone.“

* Xconomy, a network of hyper-local business/innovation news sites, is opening shop in Detroit. This might sound foreign to folks on the coasts — Xconomy’s first three sites were Boston, Seattle and San Diego — but Detroit could yield its most interesting stories. Automotive innovation as salvation, cleantech as the city’s next generation or a continued slide into the abyss… However it plays out, I’ll be reading.

* Tweet of the Day: @cdixon “The good news is we destroyed the Ring. bad news we disrupted hemisphere’s worth of air travel and two dozen national economies.”

* The Carlyle Group’s Patrick Siewert discusses the firm’s plans for its new Asia buyout fund: