we've hardly seen anything yet, ZIRP has second and third order effects which will take years to shake out. Early stage startups are only just beginning to run out of cash (after layoffs and tightening last year), the Great Flushing hasn't even started! And that's just early stage, anyone who raised from a superfund 2 years ago still has 4-5 years runway in the bank after the 50% layoffs this year. These entrepreneurs, and their backers, may not even realize that they are in fact ZIRP artifacts. They still think they earned it!

Agreed. First was "Will your company fold in the next 6 months, now that you no longer have free money?"

Now it's likely more "What is your growth efficiency (dollar:growth) in a capital-constrained environment?"

And we're going to see more and more capital sucked back into debt service, as financing comes due and is reestablished. Which will snowball the terms for any companies which require capital infusion ASAP.

It'll be curious if the Berkshire Hathaway model of coupling low-growth, good cash-flow businesses to high-growth, bad cash-flow engines becomes dominantly competitive again.