[maxerickson]

I think if we crash, we are going to crash harder than we did in 2008.

The stuff the government (and Fed) did in 2008 and since can't really be repeated. We could try even bigger fiscal stimulus (government spending rather than monetary policy), but there are too many people that will lose their shit over that happening. There's also not really any monetary policy tools that are left when money is free and the Federal Reserve owns trillions of dollars of household debt.

[nostrademons]

Tech will crash harder than 2008 (but not as hard as 2000).

The overall financial system will probably do a bit better, unless the student loan bubble blows at the same time. The dollar amounts in tech are tiny compared to the housing or student loan markets; there's just not as much room to go downwards.

[roymurdock]

I'm not so sure about this. What concerns me is not the private VC money in tech, but the public pension/retirement funds in companies like Twitter, Fbook, LinkedIn, etc. which are all ~70% institutionally owned.

Housing/student loan market seems pretty tight to me. Students loans cannot be discharged and house lending standards are under strict scrutiny due to 2008.

Would be interested to see any #s you have though.

[rafaelc]

The way I visualize it is thinking in terms of levers. And there are only two major levers - monetary policy and fiscal policy. Monetary policy is historically the more effective of the two at stimulating the economy. The problem is we have pulled the monetary policy almost all the way down. The only way to pull it further is negative interest rates, which is terrifying in its implications. On the fiscal policy side, pulling that lever costs in the hundreds of billions each time (e.g. TARP was ~$450 billion) and is less effective.

[sseveran]

If the fed does nothing the party will continue. Institutions will need to chase yield and will still give money to VCs.