UsableMarkets

Again, from the FT: Mafia cashes in on Italian downturn.

Italy’s Mafia gangs are profiting from the credit crunch by expanding lending to small businesses and using their vast pools of cash to buy up property and companies at knockdown prices.

A report by Confesercenti, an association of shopkeepers which operates a Mafia research group, estimates that 180,000 small enterprises have turned to loan sharks, partly because the credit crunch has affected bank lending.

~alex