“Wall Street is the modern version of organized crime.” ~ Jason Hartman

It turns out that the above quote from income property expert and AIPIS founder, Jason Hartman, was right on the money. Jason’s been saying it for years and, with the court case United States of America v. Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm, we’re seeing the first salvo in the coming war against the new cartel of Wall Street bankers who conspired to manipulate the interest rates on municipal bonds, skimming billions of dollars from the coffers of small cities and towns across the United States in the process.
It’s not so boring a story any more. We may have misspoken slightly when we compared these Wall Street guys to the mob. The mob NEVER dreamed this big.

But municipal bonds are so boring. Isn’t the mafia supposed to be all about fast cars, loose women, high stakes, and blazing gunfights? That’s certainly the Hollywood version of the mob, but keep in mind that organized crime is also about exploitation, twisting arms and dipping their hands into the public till again and again.

The mafia has also long made it a policy to rig bids for businesses like garbage collection and construction contracts. Seen in this light, skimming money from small town municipal bonds would make the Godfather proud. The problem is that defendants Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg, and Peter Grimm, along with a laundry list of major Wall Street banks – GE Capital, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia, and more – colluded to fix the granting of public bid projects.

Accepting bribes and granting favors are methods the mafia has been using for a very long time and the court case recently completed with a guilty verdict makes it obvious that the new organized crime, like Jason Hartman has been saying, operates on Wall Street. The Carollo case was slowly and painstakingly built by federal prosecutors over the past decade. Wiretaps and witnesses provided evidence of a massive, coordinated effort to skim from a $3.7 trillion dollar industry.

While the Carollo case was the first aimed at cracking the Wall Street thugs schemes wide open, there are sure to be more. A riveting account, written by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone Magazine, reveals the whole sordid plan. Read it here. Believe us, it’s worth your time. Now you begin to understand why Jason advises that you only participate in direct investments which you control yourself. Never give the Wall Street hooligans a chance to reach into your back pocket. (Top image: Flickr | The-Lane-Team)

The AIPIS Team