businesses, infiltrating all regions of the country.”
A “risk?” More like a guarantee…
“The Mafia is ramping up its investing,” prosecutor Antonino Di Matteo tells Bloomberg. “The Mafia’s financial managers are trying to invest now, while the time is right, so that they can launder their fortunes once and for all.”
The Tony Soprano Full Employment Act
It isn’t just Europe where crime pays. In the United States, scores of less than savory characters are salivating at the new opportunities created by Washington.
We already know that the alphabet soup of acronyms dreamed up by Turbo Timmy Geithner and Helicopter Ben Bernanke are borderline criminal – TARP, TALF, PPIP and so on – but I’m talking straight-up Goodfellas type stuff here. For instance…
Two weeks or so ago, I sat next to a paving contractor in a local poker tournament. (Just as in Las Vegas, in Reno/Tahoe you can find a tourney on any given weekend.)
“Business is very good,” my fellow poker player reported. “Amazingly good actually. That stimulus cash is really starting to flow.” Apparently he was doing some heavy construction work on a nearby Indian reservation. Big road upgrades, courtesy of a check from Uncle Sam – and the backlog of work was piling up.
Now, I imagine this paving contractor’s business is probably 100% aboveboard and legit (even though he wears enough heavy gold to fall somewhere between Liberace and Mr. T). But if he wanted to cut a few corners, how hard could it be?
Or, heck, maybe he’s the victim in all this. Plenty of aboveboard businessmen in the construction trade wind up greasing a palm or two on their way to a finished project… sometimes