peHUB First Read

* Don't blame short-sighted automakers, over-privileged unions or Japan for Detroit's woes. Blame chicken farmers. * Floyd Norris: The Internet's role in gaming the markets. * Morning Call: U.S. shares point upward as we await the April jobs data, London rises early, European stocks climb on financial and commodities, the Nikkei hits 6-month closing high on bank surge and Hong Kong edges up 1 percent. * HCA has un-PIKed its PIK toggle. Is this a sign that the leveraged loan bubble may not be the next economic shoe to drop? * Luxury as an investment? That's the tact being taken by some high-end marketers. * BusinessWeek puts private equity back on its cover (after a long hiatus), suggesting that the industry could ultimately "rev up" the U.S. economy. I've got a bunch if little nit-picks (e.g., CalPERS raising its PE allocation, which was more a denominator effect response than faith in the asset class), but my big criticism is that the authors don't discuss the repercussions from the lousy mega-deals done in 2005-2008. Not only from an ROI perspective, but from a time-consumption and reputational perspective. It's a Schwarzmanian outlook, in which the future is unencumbered by the past. (all that aside, still a very worthy read)