If only one in four American adults can name his or her U.S. senators, we can assume that even fewer know what Libor is. Libor (pronounced lie-bor) is at the center of another major financial scandal, but that may not improve its name recognition much. This is summer, after all, and making sense of financial manipulation requires effort.

The public should understand that what they don't know can cost them. The illegal fixing of Libor, the interest rate to which much of the world's financial transactions are tied, took a ton of money out of ordinary folks' pockets and handed it to the select few. The beauty of such cons is that the little people don't even know they're being fleeced.

Libor stands for the London Interbank Offered Rate. It's the interest rate banks charge each other for big loans. The British Banking Association is supposed to oversee it but apparently did not notice that Barclays was submitting falsely lower rates, probably to make its financial position look stronger. More than a dozen other banks are said to have been in on the fun.

We've been subject to shocking financial scandals in recent years, but some experts are calling this one the worst. Still, what exactly does Libor have to do with you and me?

If banks set the Libor rate artificially low, then they could pay the cities and states that entered financial contracts with them less than these governments were entitled to. Such shortfalls are traditionally made up by the taxpayers or through cuts in services. Hedge funds entering futures contracts tied to Libor rates were cheated, as well.

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The United States is getting more corrupt. So says Transparency International, which ranks the country the 16th least-corrupt in the world in 2001. By last year, the United States fell back to 24th place.

Why is corruption spreading? A recent New York Times story fingers everything from globalization to rising income inequality, as well as the growing role of corporate money in political campaigns. Yet, while corporations are spending more than ever on political campaigns, we’ve also recently seen a noticeable uptick in corporate corruption scandals.

Have corporations lost whatever ethical compass they once had? Are Americans even remotely ...

British and U.S. authorities are both now investigating Barclays and other banks for manipulating the London InterBank Offered Rate, an interest rate that is a benchmark for a host of financial products around the world. Regulators charge that the banks rigged the interest rate’s movements in order to profit and to make themselves look healthier during the financial crisis of 2008 than they actually were.

This comes on the heels of JP Morgan losing billions of dollars chasing profits with trades that were meant to reduce risk, and, of course, is just a few years removed from a crisis caused in large part by Wall Street malfeasance. But according to a survey by the whistleblower law firm Labaton Sucharow, Wall Street executives believe this is just part of the financial business. In fact, nearly one quarter of survey respondents said that financial services employees need to be unethical or engage in illegal ...

In November 2001, Bank of New York, a mid-tier U.S. bank, transferred nearly $8 billion of its own assets to a trust in the small, business-friendly state of Delaware through several layers of newly created companies.

A mixture of home mortgages, shares and other securities, the transferred assets made up almost 10 percent of the bank’s total assets at the time. Yet, the transaction was not discussed with BNY’s regulators; nor was it noted in the bank’s financial statements or annual report. It had little practical effect on the lender’s day-to-day operations — the assets continued to be managed and serviced by the same employees in New York.

But it was a critical first step in setting up a complex structure known as STARS — structured trust advantaged repackaged securities — which U.S. tax authorities claim was used by several American banks as an abusive tax shelter that has cost the government more than $1 billion in tax revenue in the past decade.

This week, BNY will square off against the Internal Revenue Service in U.S. Tax Court in New York over STARS and the tax benefits tit triggered for the U.S. bank and U.K.-based Barclays, its counterpart in the deal. At issue is whether STARS was set up primarily to generate artificial foreign-tax credits, as the IRS contends; or was a legal way for BNY to obtain financing at rock-bottom rates.

The arguments heard this week will pose a crucial test of the U.S. government’s resolve to rein in sophisticated corporate tax planning that has sapped vast amounts of potential revenue. Tax authorities worldwide, notably in the U.S. and U.K., are under mounting pressure to show that large companies are shouldering their share of the tax burden as part of a broader political debate about fairness and corporate social responsibility.

“We are upping our game in the large business area, particularly as it relates to international tax ...