Stephen Foley: Another big name joins the tech bubble

US Outlook: On the subject of departures from Mr Obama's economics team, the president's former chief adviser and Harvard professor, Larry Summers, joined the advisers of Marc Andreessen's venture capital firm this week.

Andreessen Horowitz is one of the biggest culprits inflating the prices of tech companies, and is hard to see Mr Summers' arrival as anything but a signal that we are in bubble territory now.

It would be uncouth for Mr Summers to go back to Wall Street, where he made millions on the board of a hedge fund last time he was out of government, but by going to Silicon Valley he has put his snout as close to the feeding trough as is politically acceptable.

When outsiders flood into the tech industry it is time to raise the alarm. The most worrying thing about Mr Summers' arrival is that he has the connections to persuade university endowments to put their money into venture capital. And we know how that turned out last time.

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