This morning’s Observer column…

It’s not just in Iceland that it has dawned on people that there is a connection between the hallucinatory world of securitised assets and the real world of savings and deposits. Silicon Valley has also woken up to the realisation that – shock, horror – it might affect technology companies too.

Just to underline the point, last Tuesday Sequoia Capital, the second-smartest venture capital firm in the Valley (after Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), invited entrepreneurs and chief executive officers from its stable of start-up and established companies to a meeting. According to one report from an insider, invitees were greeted on arrival by a tasteful image of a gravestone engraved with the message: ‘RIP: Good Times.’