Where Silicon Valley stands on the downgrade

[Commentary] The S&P downgrade has sent Wall Street on a roller coaster, but how have the markets’ massive up-and-down swings impacted the global tech epicenter in California?

Multibillion-dollar global behemoths, such as Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard, and Oracle have powered much of the Valley’s growth during the past four decades. The people who run these tech titans are bracing for another recession. Tech spending had been in recovery mode, but customers won't buy more PCs, networking equipment or database software if they see their sales and revenues stagnating. Venture capitalists, the apex predators of Silicon Valley, are far more worried than the tech titans. The economic meltdown after the fall of Lehman Bros. decimated the venture capital industry, with many well-known funds holding onto underwater portfolios and thousands of venture capital jobs vanishing into thin air.

But all of this will barely make a dent in the consciousness of Silicon Valley’s native tribe of eternal optimists — the tech entrepreneurs. History has shown, time and again, that a bad economy is a good time to launch a business, since the lean times embed a lean, scrappy business DNA into a company.