Times are officially tough: Sequoia says so

Talk about the insulated bubble that is Silicon Valley. Sequoia, one of the best venture capital firms out there, emails a bunch of portfolio companies and tells them to hunker down. And now everyone notices that things may not be so peachy in Web 2.0-ville.

GigaOm has the details and notes that the Valley is in for rough times. My question: What took Sequoia so long?

Here on the other coast we have AIG exploding, the government taking everything over, interest rate cuts that don't work and SAP warning about an end-of-quarter collapse that's almost mind boggling. Will someone please explain to me how Web 2.0 startups in the Valley would escape this mess?

There's no credit. There certainly aren't any stocks that are going up. And we on the East Coast have been scared to death for a few weeks now. Good thing Sequoia's email woke up the Valley. But again Sequoia may be a tad late with its alarm bell.