peHUB First Read

Some links to kick off your Thursday:

* Is it too early to declare J.C. Flowers the most snakebitten firm of 2008? The latest setback is that Icelandic bank Kaupthing has pulled out of an agreement to buy Flowers portfolio company NIBC for €3 billion. Chris Flowers happens to be speaking in New Hampshire tomorrow at a Tuck School conference, but media is unfortunately banned. Hopefully some enterprsing students will ask the right questions, and report back.

* Could the M&A market help stave off a recession?

* MBIA writes off $2.3 billion, but Warburg Pincus sticks to its word.

* Mark Evans takes Twitter seriously.

* A new VC-backed platform named Triad 700 is among the bidders in the FCC’s latest spectrum auction. I’ll have more on this once I return to the home office, since the group’s SEC filing is somewhere on my desktop.