If you've put off reading Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century, you can dip your toes in the water with Stephen Colbert's quick primer on income inequality, generational stagnation, r is greater than g, and other economic concepts all the cool kids are talking about this summer.

Bad times have hit sunnily optimistic northern California. Does it matter if the mayhem on Wall Street had any real connection with the tech-powered Silicon Valley economy? Some of the region's most influential power brokers believe it will — and by pushing others around, they can make perception reality. A helpful insider has provided notes from a recent meeting of Sequoia Capital, a backer of Apple, Cisco, and Google which has risen to become the Valley's preeminent venture-capital firm. Michael Moritz had summoned CEOs of Sequoia's portfolio companies to tell them to prepare for a long, hard downturn. The bottom line: All startups must become cash-flow positive — in other words, earn more than they spend. Or in other, other words, act like the real businesses they always should have emulated. Here are what our tipster claims are notes from the meeting, apparently forwarded by one of the attendees:

Sequoia-backed RockYou, the second-largest widgetmaker on Facebook, is considering plans to staff a New York office with 2-5 ad salespeople — copying a move made by archrival Slide two months ago. Funny, it normally doesn't take these two so long to imitate each other. It's a much-needed move: RockYou has a reputation for being slow to respond even when advertisers come knocking on its door. The startup has been content to coast on charging other appmakers for promotion, and we hear it's on track to take in $10 million in revenues this year. But at some point, the company will have to give up that business model — which strikes some as suspiciously pyramidal — for legit dollars from Madison Avenue.

Venture capitalist Lee Lorenzen has profited from the hype about Facebook applications. And he'd like to share. In a message he sent to reporters — the recipients were apparently chosen because they wrote about two of his startups, Adonomics and TheUADA — he's offering to let them invest in a financing round for the companies. I'll spare you the lectures about journalistic ethics: Michael Arrington already writes about startups he's invested in at TechCrunch. Why can't everybody play this game? Ah, well, there's the hitch in Lorenzen's plan: He likely has no clue how little money reporters make, compared to the programmers and executives of the Valley. While buying into a startup on the cheap in a seed round might sound like a promising investment, most journalists would rather get a guaranteed 18 percent return by paying off their credit cards. Why not just send reporters a check for every positive story they write? That seems easier. Here's Lorenzen's letter:

Wantrepreneurs are all talk. Actual entrepreneurs — like you, dear reader — know what the words they say mean. Blogging VC Fred Wilson makes an effort to help by defining the term "lead investor." I suspect anyone ambitious enough to benefit from his advice will be too impatient to wade through it. Forthwith, the 100-word version.

At PaidContent, Rafat Ali picked up this interesting fact from a perfunctory USA Today profile of Arianna Huffington: Her company, The Huffington Post, has raised another $5 million in financing. With blogging companies in vogue with big media, though, that strikes me as small change. Huffington doesn't even pay most of her celebrity bloggers, so it's not clear what she would need the money for. But one wonders why she didn't take more money off the table. Could it be that, despite all the buzz, the Post's blog-for-free business model isn't all that hot?