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The Wall Street Journal's award-winning business reporter unveils the bizarre and sinister story of how a math genius named Tom Hayes, a handful of outrageous confederates, and a deeply corrupt banking system ignited one of the greatest financial scandals in history. In 2006, an oddball group of bankers, traders and brokers 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 in loans worldwide�was set daily by a small group 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 mathematician, became the lynchpin of a wild alliance that among others included a French trader nicknamed �Gollum�; the broker �Abbo,� who liked to publicly strip naked when drinking; a Kazakh chicken farmer turned something short of financial whiz kid; a broker known as �Village� (short for �Village Idiot�) and fascinated with human-animal sex; an executive called �Clumpy� because of his patchwork hair loss; and a broker uncreatively nicknamed �Big Nose.� Eventually known as the �Spider Network,� Hayes�s circle generated untold riches �until it all unraveled in spectacularly vicious, backstabbing fashion. The Spider Network is not only a rollicking account of the scam, but a provocative examination of a financial system that was crooked throughout, designed to promote envelope-pushing behavior while shielding higher-ups from the consequences of their subordinates� rapacious actions.