Venture Capital on The Table

An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal says venture capital firms don't need to be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner suggested. The article, by James Freeman, says that VC firms aren't a risk like the housing bubble or Bernard Madoff's scheme since they invest about $30 billion a year and that "if our economic system is to thrive, venture capital is exactly the place where we have to encourage risk." Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch agrees, though he's not sure Geithner intended to call out VC firms. "Does he really intend to go after the venture capital industry, or is he merely trying to close a loophole for hedge funds and other private equity funds to avoid disclosure by reclassifying assets as venture investments?" he asks.