National Network for Equitable Library Service

In 2006, an oddball group of bankers and traders from some of the world's largest financial institutions made a startling realization: LIBOR--the London interbank offered rate, which determines the interest rates on trillions of dollars in loans worldwide--was set daily by a small team of easily manipulated functionaries, and that they could reap huge profits by nudging it to suit their trading portfolios. Tom Hayes, a brilliant but troubled math genius, became the linchpin of a wild alliance that included a French trader nicknamed "Gollum"; a Kazakh chicken farmer turned something short of a financial whiz kid; a Swiss banker with a tendency to drunkenly accost women in bars; a karaoke-loving executive who would falsely boast about his role in a 1990s rock band; and a not-very-bright broker who spent much of his leisure time wiping out on his motorcycle. Hayes' circle would produce the era's most covert and most substantial financial scandal--until it all unraveled in a spectacularly vicious fashion.