ITALY - Prostitution, drugs, and underground cigarettes and alcohol are all bad things, right?
Well, apparently, not for Italy.
The Italian government discovered through some creative bookkeeping that it is out of a recession and it's all thanks to it's black market.
Apparently, the European Union changed how the GDP, that's gross domestic product, was calculated so that "illegal revenue" could be included.
Looks like it worked out for them since the country's output went from a 0.1 percent decline in the first quarter to a flat 0.0 percent, which means they're officially in the clear.
It also means that they've just dodged their third recession in the past six years.