One of the things we're hearing a lot of about this week are the bad investments that brought Wall Street to its knees. While the VC and start-up community appears to be largely untouched (as yet) by the crisis, Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag makes a funny point: bad investments are something VCs know all about. But unlike Wall Street, they live and die by them. Says Valleywag:

"If investors here had any sense, they'd be padding the halls of the Capitol, palms out...What is a stake in a Web 2.0 startup if not a toxic investment, waiting to be written off. And why aren't the pension funds and college endowments marking to market the fliers they took on venture capital? Conspiracy theorists too paranoid to read Snopes.com believe that Facebook is secretly run by the CIA anyway; why not rescue Microsoft and the other investors who bought in at a $15 billion valuation, and make it official?"