Price Fixing

It starts when the local mob comes and tells you that your business must extend its services to a preferred group (preferred by the mob, not you) at rates which are not profitable. Naturally, your business begins to flounder, and eventually fails because it turns out that making suboptimal investments in undesirable areas to people who can’t afford them is not good business. At this point the mob comes back and says, no problem, they’ll back you with a guaranteed loan, but there’s a catch. You have to assess the value of your investments according to the artificially depressed values created by the mob. If, under this artificial calculation, you are insolvent, the mob will assume control, replacing members of your board with their designates. Oh, and you and everyone else in the community are underwriting that loan with no review, no recourse, and no appeal..