The Depression and Organised Crime

Organised Crime works in essentially three ways: it runs illegal businesses; it runs legal businesses illegally; and it skims profits off of legitimate enterprises, both private and governmental. Is the Depression hurting organised crime through a drop in revenues? Or are criminals use more 'muscle' to maintain or even increase their cash flows?

Sadly, the answer seems to be the latter. Bloomberg has recently reported Italy's organised crime revenues surged 40% last year.

What effect will this have on the economy at large? If organised crime is increasing its share, and government (thanks to Keynesianism) is also expanding through make work projects, how much can be left for the honest enterprise actually delivering the people what they actually want at a reasonable cost?

The prognosis is not good. The natural course the Depression is to squeeze the economy down to a basic core of efficient enterprises. The more the economy is burdened by crime among other inefficiencies (the aforementioned luggage inspectors come to mind), the more the end state of the economy at the bottom of the cycle will resemble mere survival.