The biggest elephant in the room is Uber Technologies Inc., valued at $62.5 billion. The company claims it is profitable by some measures in North America, but it is spending huge amounts of money to capture markets in China and elsewhere.

Remember the good old days when Uber was only valued at $50 billion?

Back in December?

Not mentioned in the article, but hammered on by Pando and others, is the fact that much of the late-stage VC investments comes with guarantees - as in, "here's my million dollars but if you don't IPO and make my stock worth at least a million two, you owe me my million dollars back regardless of where your stock ends up."

How do you think that's going to play out?

Dan Lyons stops just shy of describing Tech Bubble II as a case of chronic wealth transfer from underpaid, overworked college graduates to venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. The "exit" of the average startup kid has absolutely nothing in common with the "exit" of the average founder or early-stage investor.

Oh, well. What could go wrong?