Occupy Underground

I've kept running across references to dirty money in that housing boom -- heroin traffickers, Russian mafiosi, you name it. Construction has been a recognized method of money-laundering ever since Meyer Lansky was investing Mob profits in the Florida construction boom in the 1950s, and Spain got more than its share in the 1990s and up until the crash.

As long as things were good, of course, nobody looked too closely at where the money came from. But now the money is gone -- and only the corruption remains. Not a happy situation.