La crisi? Per molti, non per tutti. Non è solo la casta a fregarsene.

NAPLES – 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.

These mobsters have lots of what is in short supply for many businesses these days — liquidity — as well as centuries-honed expertise in preying on the vulnerable, whose ranks are swelling in the current financial crisis.

It all means the mob is free to sink cash …