The mob gets securitized

[petrea_mitchell]

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. ...