* Full circle? John Paulson has been playing the Lehman bust

* Steven Davidoff: LinkenIn may not make it many new friends with its IPO structure

* Morning Call: U.S. futures point higher, London opens flat, European shares climb and the Nikei gains 0.5%

* William Black: Why CEOs didn’t get busted in the financial meltdown

* Now hiring: TPG Capital is on the prowl for an Asia chairman

* John Carney: Did Goldman just declare the distressed debt market dark?

* Connie Loizos: Could a third Andreessen Horowitz fund be around the corner?

* Wall Street survey: Cuts alone won’t fix the budget problem (yes, they’re supporting tax hikes)

* Bob Ackerman: The Senate slaps VC-backed life sciences companies, by again stalling SBIR reform

* Kara Swisher reports that Groupon pushed to file for its IPO this week, even though not all of its banking ducks were in a row.

* Joe Weisenthal: While we wait for that tax holiday on foreign corporate cash, Microsoft/Skype represents a third path for repatriation

* Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) says “there’s no incentive at all for Republicans in the Senate to vote for” the debt limit increase “unless it does something about entitlements.” How far we’ve come, when throwing America into default is no longer considered enough “incentive” to do the responsible thing.

* Seth Myers, fresh off his White House Correspondent’s Dinner gig, at Tuesday night’s Robin Hood Foundation gala, which was chock full of hedgies and other high finance folks: “How refreshing it is to finally perform for the people who run this country.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNU9LFtBNtE]