Is Venture Capital in Trouble?

But if Ressi and Marshall have the causes wrong, they're dead-on about the consequences. Kill the venture-capital industry and you kill most new company creation (angel investors and corporate capital won't adequately fill the vacuum). Kill new company creation and you starve the single most important source in the economy for new wealth and new job creation.

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And if that new wealth and those new jobs disappear, how are we ever going to cover the credit crunch and pay for all of the new social services promised by Congress and the new president-elect? For that matter, how are we ever going to get out of this global recession?

This is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News.

Michael S. Malone is one of the nation's best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation's first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world's largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling "Virtual Corporation." Malone has also hosted three public television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, "The New Heroes." He has been the ABCNews.com "Silicon Insider" columnist since 2000.