It's that user engagement that drives Facebook's inflated stock price, and Pinterest's huge funding rounds.
The inflated stock prices made Mr. Homm's hedge funds appear to be more valuable than they actually were, a practice known as portfolio pumping, the S.E.C. said.
As E-Trade shares soared on the dot-com bubble, he used the inflated currency to fund most of a $3 billion bill for 16 acquisitions.
Mr Zorbas complained that the judiciary had not backed his probe into a scandal about government bonds worth over €300m ($425m) that were bought by state pension funds at inflated prices.
The commission's suit also accused Mr. Homm of selling stocks to his funds at inflated prices via a broker in which he had a stake, generating millions in profit for himself.
That necessary flotation, in which Fed Chairman Arthur Burns acquiesced, had an unintended consequence: it launched the frantic derivative dealing that inflated today's hedge fund bubble.
But a simmering scandal over sales of complex structured bonds at inflated prices to pension-fund managers appointed by ND threatens to make reform much harder.Euripides Stylianides, the ambitious new education minister, also has a tough task ahead.
Several hours later, a law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity told the Interfax news agency that a criminal case had been opened regarding a firm Mr. Sukhodolsky headed, on suspicion of selling equipment at inflated prices and embezzling budgetary funds.
Those were happier times, back before the banking crisis, when it was all the go to borrow as much money as possible to fund the artificially inflated cost of your grasping win-at-all-costs lifestyle.
According to federal prosecutors, big construction and engineering firms paid at least $800m in bribes and other funds in return for inflated contracts with Petrobras, which is Brazil's biggest company.
