After some embarrassing revelations about inflated profits and self-dealing, Martin was pushed out in October.

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Government subsidies effectively transfer a portion of the costs to taxpayers, enabling artificially low prices and inflated profits.

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Mr Scrushy has been charged with personally instructing senior personnel and accountants to overstate earnings and with profiting from inflated profits via share sales.

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However, much of those inflated profits were paper only.

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That's why we need Ben Bernanke to continue the work he's doing, and that's why I've said that we cannot go back to an economy based on overleveraged banks, inflated profits, and maxed-out credit cards.

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Reporting a higher reading than the real rate could have inflated trading profits artificially, misleading investors and regulators.

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In the good years, bumper bank profits inflated both corporation-tax receipts and the income-tax take from bonuses.

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Thereby both revenues and profits are inflated in the short term, though it leaves a ticking time bomb in the form of the expenditure that has to be accounted for in later years.

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Something funny was going on with the books, suggesting that revenues and profits had been inflated.

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The problem, say plaintiffs in the suit, is that banks were submitting artificially inflated Libor rates around the first day of each month in order to push their mortgage rates higher and make bigger profits.

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