It’s been a few weeks since I was able to muster the fortitude to write a full column-length Doom & Gloom piece, but that doesn’t mean happy days are suddenly here again. To wit, Anne Lowry asks “If a Bubble Bursts in Palo Alto, Does It Make a Sound?” Sweat out some details:
Pension funds, endowments, high-net-worth individuals and the like are also trying to figure out how to invest all their money — and along with places like the Bakken and a few emerging markets, Palo Alto seems awfully appealing. A few million in seed funding might turn to billions in an acquisition in just a few years, after all. “Valuations are at extreme levels because you cannot get a decent return on your money doing anything else,” Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures wrote on his blog. “It’s been a good time to be in the V.C. and start-up business, and I think it will continue to be as long as the global economy is weak and rates are low.” In other words, the perks-laden, savior-and-ninja-saturated, TED-talking beast that has seemingly taken over Northern California in recent years might be a byproduct of high corporate profits and Fed policy as much as anything else.
But what happens if and when the normal patterns of the economy reassert themselves?
By that time, the Democrat party’s Silicon Valley and Wall Street cronies will have already gotten plenty enough not to worry about it.
You and me, not so much.
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