The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History

This is how its done. Get the inside source who spills his guts then shape a narrative around it. Tom Hayes went to jail for 14 years before that he dominated the Tokyo currency market. In order to dominate that he needed libor to go his way like so many traders in the currency / interest / credit world of the oughts. As banks did more prop trading and pushed risk the pressure to move libor got larger. Libor was subject to widespread manipulation since 1991. What Hays did differently is engange in switch trades to curry favor with the libor setters. The switch trades had no business reason except to manipulate but they require three parties to pull off. Hayes, another trader and a broker. Hayes used multple brokers to pull these trades - a network of fraud. When the markets crashed in 2007-2008 it was obvious that libor was a joke. It didn't crash or seize up like everything else. Hayes made a killing in 08 because libor didn't tank, it didn't tank because it was made up rate. The second scam in this story is how once the scheme was expose - wide spread industry manipulation - everyone conspired to make Hayes the fall guy. That's the tragedy in the whole thing. Hayes did his dirt and is not without fault, but mildly autistic he missed all the social cues that he was not the spider but the fly. Best book out of the 2008 crisis i've read. I read this whole 460 page book on a Saturday.