"This time the money is largely coming from private equity and there's not a lot of splashy IPOs happening."
There's a lot of public wealth caught up in the stock market in general right now. Technology is especially overvalued (e.g. Amazon at $150Bn, Yelp and Pandora at $5Bn, etc.) despite having more earnings than bubble v1.0. But even if you believe that the downside of a tech crash is limited, you're forgetting that technology is unlikely to crash without dragging down the entire market -- the same forces that are propping up tech are propping up everything else.
Moreover, people keep talking about hedge funds as if they're completely dissociated from the larger market. But a lot of pension, retirement and other "conservative" wealth has been flooding into these funds seeking a return over the last few years. Grandma's retirement not isolated from the health of the tech industry; it's just harder for journalists to see the risk this time, because it doesn't look like last time.
There's a lot of public wealth caught up in the stock market in general right now. Technology is especially overvalued (e.g. Amazon at $150Bn, Yelp and Pandora at $5Bn, etc.) despite having more earnings than bubble v1.0. But even if you believe that the downside of a tech crash is limited, you're forgetting that technology is unlikely to crash without dragging down the entire market -- the same forces that are propping up tech are propping up everything else.
Moreover, people keep talking about hedge funds as if they're completely dissociated from the larger market. But a lot of pension, retirement and other "conservative" wealth has been flooding into these funds seeking a return over the last few years. Grandma's retirement not isolated from the health of the tech industry; it's just harder for journalists to see the risk this time, because it doesn't look like last time.
Remember: This Time It's Different! (tm)