Briac

* No waiting: Banking regulators aren't waiting for Obama to impose stricter risk standards, although the private equity stuff is all White House. * Unintended consequence: Obama's bank rules could sink community development VC funds * At SEC, the system can be deaf to whistleblowing * When things stop getting verified, and start getting unreal: Five journalists picked to live in a house and report based only on Twitter And Facebook * Morning Call: U.S. futures point higher on GE earnings, London opens flat, European shares slip, the Nikkei hits 3-week closing low and China shares stumble. * Sim Simeonov: How entrepreneurs can raise money without lying to investors * Mark Suster: How entrepreneurs can work with lawyers (without wanting to gouge their eyes out) * Private equity as sugar daddy for homebuilders. * Barry Ritholtz says WSJ has jumped the shark: "The politicalization of the WSJ has moved to a new and more dangerous phase. The paper is now in danger of being a money loser — not for its investors (tho that has already happened), but for those traders who read its content."

* Get ready for a solar startup bloodbath * Movie Theater Investments: The Squeakquel * Shades of Jim Chanos: Reuters looks at China Inc's growing pains * Sim Simeonov: The decade's defining tech battle will be hardware vs. software * Morning Call: U.S. futures point lower, London slips early, European shares rebound, the Nikkei slips and China shares near one-month closing low. * Crayola crayon colors multiply like rabbits * Nic Brisbourne: Don't worry Europe, there are still some VCs left here * Bill Gates joins Twitter (as a user, not an exec): @billgates * Don't take photos in the SAC Capital parking lot * Roddy Boyd says Overstock.com's Patrick Byrne is America's nastiest CEO * Reason #24 to launch your startup in New York: "There are no girls in Silicon Valley." (Fred Wilson offers some other reasons)

Venture capitalist Fred Wilson today wrote about "DST deals," or later-stage VC investments for companies that have rejected corporate takeover offers. Think Facebook, Twitter and Yelp. Fred positions this as a new phenomenon, and an indication that "VCs are starting to compete directly with the M&A market." I'm not sure I agree on either count. First, we've seen this show before. Russia's DST is certainly a new player, but Advanced Equities has been doing this sort of thing for years. So was Tudor Ventures for a while. And remember that explosion of big-dollar corporate venturing in 1999-2001, in which ROI was considered more important than strategic alignment? Or big buyout firms dipping into the VC market?

* 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.

* Eric Ries: Two ways to hold entrepreneurs accountable * Felix Salmon: Why the bank tax is necessary (and virtually required by law) * Ticket proceeds to the upcoming peHUB Shindig in New York City were originally slated to be donated to a local charity, but we're now going to send them to Doctors without Borders (to aid in Haiti relief). The first check for more than $3k will be sent out this afternoon. There are fewer than 100 tickets left, so get yours soon. * Morning Call: U.S. futures are mixed, London rises early, European shares climb on banks, the Nikkei jumps on techs and Hong Kong falls again. * Lloyd Blankfein channels Emily Littela * Larry Cheng updates his list of the most-visited VC bloggers * Mohamed El-Erian: Waiting for better times is no substitute for action * Press Release of the Day: RiseSmart CEO Sanjay Sathe Exposes Five HR Myths in "Up in the Air"

* Chinese investors, entrepreneurs on Google: "Just quit. We don't care." * Age bias in Silicon Valley: Sequoia Capital's Doug Leone reportedly said that his firm "focuses on younger entrepreneurs because people over 30 aren't innovative." But don't worry if you're a Sequoia senior citizen. You still might make a decent manager. * Yesterday we sold more than 270 tickets to our next peHUB Shindig, which is taking place on February 3 in New York City. Get yours here. * Morning Call: U.S. futures mixed ahead of Intel earnings, London rises early, European shares climb on banks and miners, the Nikkei rebounds and Hong Kong takes a minor dip. Also, President Obama today will propose a fee on major financial firms to protect taxpayers from future bailout losses. * BlackRock president Robert Kapito sees stronger emerging markets ahead. * ValleyWag is offering $100k to anyone who can smuggle them an Apple tablet for an hour. * Derek Thompson argues that 2008 was the year entrepreneurship died. Great headline, but the underlying facts are questionable. Thompson assets that the greatest area for entrepreneurial growth over the next decade will be cleantech. Let's give him that. But he then asserts that investment in the sector is "falling off a cliff." For evidence, he cites at Economist story about how big energy companies have reduced R&D and investment spend. He then conflates those numbers with VC investment in the sector, even though VC cleantech investment hit a record level in 2008 (not mentioned). He also doesn't note that VCs actually backed more cleantech companies in 2009 than in 2008 (or 2007) -- the total dollars were down, but that was largely because VCs have cut back of cap-heavy projects like renewable energy production and doubled-up on IT-enabled cleantech efforts like smart grid infrastructure.

* Mark Ragan: My story of living through jargon hell in the private equity world * Stewart Ellman: Do VCs have expiration dates? * Steven Pearlstein: "NBC's late-night farce is emblematic of just about everything that is wrong with American business these days." * Morning Call: U.S. futures point higher, London ticks lower, European shares rise on pharma, the Nikkei falls 1.3% and China shares slide on PBOC tightening. * Mitch Lasky on EA's miss * John Nunemaker: I have no talent * Robert Mancuso: Think twice before you IPO * Michael Corkery: "Wall Street bankers haven’t faced a grilling like this since financier J.P. Morgan Jr. ended up with a circus midget in his lap and his sterling reputation in tatters."

* Dharmesh Shah: 10 things most MBA programs won't teach you about startups * Chinese banks are beginning to step into traps that await novice global acquirers. * Brad Burnham of Union Square Ventures argues for an independent invention defense to fight patent trolls. * Morning Call: Stock futures fall on Alcoa earnings, London falls early, European shares extend losses, the Nikkei keeps clumbing despite JAL's tumble and China rises on shipping stocks. * A 2011 IPO for Chrysler? * Robert Scoble: Best and worst of 2010 CES * Montagu Private Equity's new chief sidelights as an Iron Man Triathlon competitor * Rob Day: VC fundraising woes could have a negative trickle-down effect for entrepreneurs. * Jeff Gundlach is fighting back against TCW, but also seems to concede the veracity of TCW's most salacious charges.

* Malcom Gladwell argues that the successful entrepreneur "is anything but a risk-taker. He is a predator, and predators seek to incur the least risk possible while hunting.” (sub req, but you can get a free trial) * CalPERS this week will release another raft of documents about placement agents, and the general partners who love them. * Sean Park: "The way the institutional marketplace for private equity (including venture capital) is structured is all about raising capital and only incidently about investing that capital." * Morning Call: U.S. futures up on China import data, London hits 16-month high, European shares keep climbing, the Nikkei gains 1.1% despite a 12% loss for Japan Airlines and both Hong Kong and China shares rise. * A script for The Big Lebowski, as it would have been written by Shakespeare * Wall Street "frat" Kappa Beta Phi names its newest members (and throws dinner rolls at them) * Ben Holmes of Index Ventures believes that VCs might finally be seeing a light at the end of their mobile black hole... * ... but The Deal sees a continuing black hole for VC investments into online music startups * Michael Eisenberg of Benchmark Capital asks I-bankers not to ruin the current IPO window

* TCW has sued former star manager Jeff Gundlach, whose new asset management firm is backed by Oaktree Capital Management. It's the usual stuff: Stealing clients, misappropriating confidential data... oh, and keeping drugs, porn and sex toys in his office. * Mike Hischland: "A general frugality and focus on profitability does not mean that startups should, in all instances, focus on burning less and less capital each successive month. In fact, sometimes... it is just the opposite: the wise thing to do is to increase burn at a certain point." * On Tuesday, I referred to the NYC pension system structure as a "cluster$&*$." Imagine my surprise/amazement/amusement to be quoted, verbatim, by the City's new comptroller John Liu. * Morning Call: U.S. futures point higher ahead of payroll data, London rises early, European shares climb on banks, the Nikkei hits 15-month high and positive closes in both China and Hong Kong. * UBS hates loves LBOs * David Walt: Five disruptive biotech ideas to watch over the next decade * Jim Chanos keeps predicting economic meltdown in China: "Dubai times 1,000 — or worse.” Jim Rogers dissents.