[hnsmurf]

I'm not so sure. I think the broader economic forces may help tech companies rather than hurt.

No matter what happens, America (and the world) will still have a lot of very wealthy people and institutions. Those people need to put their money somewhere. The stock market is scary, bonds and banks don't pay anything. If you had $100 million tomorrow to invest what would you do with it? I'd start looking for startups.

10% unemployment seems bad to us, relative to our more historical 5%, but Europe has dealt with that for decades. People still buy iPhones and sign up for Netflix. Even if the market for new services is reduced by a few %, the quality of new services will more than make up for it.

Rich people will still want to make money and startups will still be an appealing way to do it.

[chailatte]

I would invest in gold. No hassle. No risk since every country is printing money and putting savers at risk. Doubled in price in dollar in two years thus far.

[diogenescynic]

Every piece of gold every minted is still sitting around somewhere, there is no reason tomorrow it won't be back down to $400/oz. Gold is just a measurement of fear and confidence in governments/currencies. If you really think governments/FIAT currencies are going to fail you might as well by SPAM and canned goods because they're going to be a hell of a lot more valuable during a true depression than some shiny metal.

[jarek]

Absolutely no risk of price falling closer to its intrinsic value either...

[Jach]

I'd sooner get bitcoins than gold. =P No risk since there's no government involved.~ Doubled multiple times in the last several months. (Recently halved a time or two though. :( ) No middle-men or scammy "buy all your gold here and then we'll go out of business and you'll never get it back!" businesses if you just want to mine everything.

[checker]

Gold is the safe bet, but some people like to diversify with some riskier investments.

[kragen]

That's a peculiar sense of "safe". The value of gold fluctuates substantially over time, even over fairly short periods of time. Sometimes (like the last decade) it goes up; other times (like most of the 1980s and some of the 1990s) it goes down. It's easy to lose half of what you invested; if you time it right, you can lose seven-eighths.

The peculiar sense in which gold is "safe" is that it tends to go down just as much as it goes up; that is, it isn't subject to secular inflation or deflation.

[checker]

Thanks for the explanation. I guess I was repeating what I've heard from the talking heads on TV that really provide popcorn financial advice.