peHUB First Read

* Tim Geithner’s press conference is at 11am, and we’ll be live-blogging it here at peHUB. The NY Times has more details here, including how Geithner prevailed in his opposition to provisions like more stringent executive comp caps and dictates on how recipients could spent the money (such as actually making them lend). I’ll be looking to see how detailed Geithner is vis-a-vis private investor participation, particularly in terms of government-backed guarantees. There is real buying interest among private investors, but there also seems to have been a relative lack of communication between such folks and the Treasury staff (described twice to me yesterday as “insular”). Perhaps that indicates that today we’ll see broad strokes rather than tight specifics…

* The Private Equity Council, a trade group representing the largest U.S. buyout firms, says that its members have adopted a set of UN-backed “principles for responsible investment.”

* Morning Call: U.S. futures point down, London slides, other European shares drop on banks and commodities, the Nikkei slips on choppy yen trades and Hong Kong keeps rising.

* Cisco’s cash pile keeps growing, which is good news for software, hardware and security companies looking to be acquired.

* Dan Lyons says you can’t grow rich by blogging. Maybe not rich, but is that really what most journalists are striving for? If so, why did they become journalists. It’s an interesting piece, but ignores a lot of self-cannibalization, including RSS feeds and commission-heavy online ad networks.

* Carl Icahn: Capitalism should return to its roots.

* A report from the American Securitization Conference. This should be renamed The Next Shoe To Drop Conference.

* How much is your MBA really worth?

* Is Google going to become this decade’s AOL?

* VC-backed space exploration company SpaceX is setting its sights on Mars: