"LIBOR is used as a benchmark to set payments on about $800 trillion-worth of financial instruments, ranging from complex interest-rate derivatives to simple mortgages. The number determines the global flow of hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Over the past week damning evidence has emerged, in documents detailing a settlement between Barclays and regulators in America and Britain, that employees at the bank and at 20 other big unnamed banks tried to rig the number time and again over a period of at least five years…In settlements with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in Britain and America’s Department of Justice, Barclays accepted that its traders had manipulated rates on hundreds of occasions."

The LIBOR scandal: The rotten heart of finance | The Economist