Pre-Marketing 12.2.10

December 2, 2010, 5:51 PM UTC

* Thomas H. Lee gets dragged into the Madoff mess

* The Australian taxman gets tough on private equity profits

* Let the year-end lists begin: The 10 biggest biz stories of 2010

* Morning Call: U.S. futures point higher, London rises early, European shares climb and the Nikkei gains 1.8%.

* Be sure to sign up for our daily Term Sheet emails.

* Marketing d’uh: Fiji Water reverses plan to quit Fiji islands.

* Peter Orszag is sort of staying on the U.S. gov’t payroll. He plans to take a job at Citigroup.

* Did your favorite financial institution get bailed out by the Fed? Just type in its name to find out.

* Final wording of a new U.S. for-profit education regulation could launch a private equity run on the industry.

* Amazon’s plan to defend against the Google/Groupon threat

* Speaking of Goopon, it seems that CEO Andrew Mason’s “miniature dollhouse” comment wasn’t the first time he got tongue-in-cheek in reply to sale reports. Two months ago, he told CNN that he’d willingly sell the company to Exxon.

* Tweet of the Day: @MikeDuda As angry as the US DOJ is with WikiLeaks, imagine if Julian Assange changed the documents to Comic Sans.