There was a HBO series on TV called Boardwalk Empire which had been heard about, but finally watched season 1 from a collection at the local library. The setting is Atlantic City which is halfway between New York City and Philadelphia or it was the playground for both families and adults. During the day, families walked the Boardwalk to see the sites, watch people, and enjoy the beach. After hours, the city came alive with gambling, shows, and liquor because it refused to enforce the laws – instead, the highest level of civil servants and politicians accepted bribes to keep the city going. The leader was Enoch “Nucky” Thompson who ruled the town in his role of Treasurer. In season one, one of his driving forces was to have new roads built to make it easier for people to come to Atlantic City as well as trucks loaded with booze to go to the cities. In the show there is a healthy mixture of gangsters – Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, and Arnold Rothstein. The setting of the show is in the era of Prohibition however, Atlantic City decided not to enforce it, at a time when most of the USA took Sundays off, Atlantic City was open 7 days a week. You can watch the show from the entertainment value, you can watch it for the emphasis on gangsters and you can watch it for how to secure monopoly control.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, most profitable companies do not have to deal with organized crime on a day-to-day basis although these companies do pay their bills, sometimes healthy advances. In the show, Nucky was an able disciplined executive who was able to keep his operations going smoothly, when others tried to take his place they failed and Nucky had to solve crisis. The show highlights his abilities for he is based on a real person and the average person in Atlantic City accepted how the operation worked and the benefits of it. Not having seen Season 5, is expected the show would show how the world changes and what was good before, needs to be changed now. It is easier to invest in stocks which stay on the right side of the law.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.