The mob gets securitized

There've been a bunch of stories in Money Stuff recently that I've thought about linking to except each of them was surpassed by something even crazier in a day or two. But here's one that wasn't topped for a couple weeks: the 'Ndrangheta issuing bonds backed by the cashflow of its corrupt businesses.

As Levine says,

It’s like anything else; the industry starts small and scrappy, with people who really care about the work itself (extortion), but when it gets lucrative enough it starts to attract Harvard MBAs, until eventually real innovation stalls and everyone spends all their time on financial engineering and optimizing capital efficiency.

We are in the early stages of extortion-backed securities but it is a predictable path. ...

86 days to go

Hydrangeas are blooming all over the neighborhood and Queen Anne's lace all over the park.

This week's big adventure was loading up with the truck with what turned out to be 360 pounds of assorted junk and hauling it out to the transfer station. The SO has done this run a couple times before, but I've never gotten to come along. Now I know a tiny bit more about how the infrastructure of my civilization works.

Figuring that a vaccine might become generally available early next year, we're maybe almost halfway through social distancing. My plans for trips to take once it's possible to take them again grow ever more elaborate.