AP: Italy’s Mafia thrives in global financial meltdown.

NAPLES, Italy (AP) – While businesses around the world are hunkering down for survival, the Italian mob is living a golden moment. Italy’s various organized crime syndicates—often lumped together colloquially as Mafia Inc.—are gobbling up gas stations, muscling in on supermarket franchises, making loans to cash-starved businesses, taking over trattorias and acquiring buildings in swank neighborhoods in Rome and Milan, investigators say.