Spain is moving towards accepting European bailouts, even as protests in Madrid turned violent and politicians in the Catalonia region called for secession.

“It’s just amazing how Libor fixing can make you that much money or lose if opposite.” So said Tan Chi Min, a former Royal Bank of Scotland trader in a conversation with traders at other banks, in an affidavit reviewed by Bloomberg. “It’s a cartel now in London.” Tan is suing RBS in Singapore for wrongful dismissal after being fired for attempting to manipulate Libor.

SAC Capital hedge fund manager Michael Steinberg is said to be an unindicted co-conspirator in the government's insider trading case against hedge fund managers Anthony Chiasson and Todd Newman and technology analyst Jon Horvath. A Sept. 6 filing, prosecutors added four unindicted co-conspirators to their case; the names were blacked out in the filing, but one of the four was "the portfolio manager to whom Jon Horvath reported at his hedge fund." That person was Mr. Steinberg, according to unnamed sources cited by Bloomberg.

Part two of Reuters massive, massively awesome profile of Peregrine Financial Group founder Russell Wasendorf Sr., who pleaded guilty to stealing millions from clients at his Iowa-based futures brokerage. Part one is here.

Former Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov is suing the bank for $2.4 million in legal fees incurred while defending himself against charges that he stole code from the firm before leaving Goldman to join a high-frequency trading startup. Mr. Aleynikov was convicted by a federal jury in 2010, but won an appeal; he now faces charges in Manhattan.

Bureaucratic infighting has roiled government investigations into money-laundering charges at HSBC, according to Reuters.

Former UBS trader Kweku Adoboli told colleagues he was reporting fictitious trades, British prosecutors said. Mr. Adoboli is being tried on charges of fraud and false accounting over unauthorized trades on which UBS lost $2.3 billion.

Matt Levine on Securities and Exchange Commission charges against Hold Brothers On-Line Investment Services: "This is fundamental forces of some algorithms versus other algorithms, and each of those algorithms represents in some imperfect and abstracted way “supply and demand,” but not in a way a human could formulate in his mind or feel in his heart."

Germany is expected to enact legislation that would rein in high-frequency trading, according to The Times.

Have you heard the one about the British hedge fund manager (Crispin Odey) who's spending $210,000 on the stone to be used to construct a luxury chicken coop?

How did he do it? With a scanner, a post office box and Adobe Photoshop.

To what end? Something about Romanian real estate investments.

How much did he take? Prosecutors say more than $200 million, though Mr. Wasendorf's public defender disputes that number.

What's this have to do with SpongeBob? Now we're getting to the heart of the matter. Earlier this month, the trustee for Peregrine's creditors produced an inventory of the firm's assets, determining that 304 silver coins picturing characters from cartoon television show SpongeBob SquarePants were missing. Mr. Wasendorf would like to help recover said commemoratives, which would retail at something like $20,000, but it's kind of hard as long as he's locked up and awaiting sentencing. Which is one reason—a desire to spend his last days before sentencing on Iowa soil, relative poverty, absence of passport are some others—his lawyer said a judge should dismiss prosecutors' requests to deny bail.

According to The Journal: "Mr. Wasendorf stands ready to further guide authorities in the process, but while he remains jailed, 'it is nearly impossible for him to assist in a meaningful review of such a large number of documents,' wrote [Mr. Wasendorf's lawyer Jane Kelly].

Believe the search for commemorative silver coins to be trivial? These Reuters reporters have a sample chapter.

Peregrine Financial Group founder Russell Wasendorf Sr. pleaded guilty to charges that he stole about $200 million from clients at the futures firm. It was initially believed that Mr. Wasendorf would be set free pending sentencing, the judge ordered the fraudster held behind bars pending a determination on the flight risk posed by the Iowa man. Meanwhile, Wasendorf's son, Russell Jr., sued U.S. Bank for allegedly failing to supervise properly the transfer of customer funds.

Lenders to embattled broadband wireless company LightSquared want permission to go after Harbinger Capital, the hedge fund founded by Phil Falcone, in bankruptcy proceedings, The Wall Street Journal says.

A Morgan Stanley infrastructure fund is tripping over the Volcker rule, which dictates how much of its own capital a bank can risk, according to Reuters. Some senior executives have left the firm rather than accept a smaller share of profits.

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro is on medical leave, according to The New York Post, and may leave the agency before her term expires in 2014.

Andrew Ross Sorkin relegates the Occupy Wall Street to the dustbin of history, along with the misfits and vagabonds he says diminished the movement.

Harvard grads are earning less than alumni of the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, says Bloomberg.

Short sellers have more than doubled their bets against Manchester United since the British soccer club that went public in a U.S. offering this summer, according to the Telegraph (h/t Business Insider).

Bradley Birkenfeld, the former UBS banker who provided the Internal Revenue Service with evidence that the Swiss bank was helping U.S. citizens evade taxes, will receive $104 million in a whistleblower award. Mr. Birkenfeld, who said he once concealed diamonds in a toothpaste tube on behalf of a client, was released from prison on Aug. 1 after serving part of a 40-month sentence after confessing that he had forgotten to blow the whistle on himself.

Deutsche Bank is lagging behind its European peers when it comes to meeting new regulatory capital requirements, according to Bloomberg. The bank may cut jobs and reduce pay ratios under a restructuring plan announced this week.

A German court paved the way for the European Central Bank to begin a new program to buy sovereign debt, dismissing a lawsuit that sought to delay the plan.

Two-thirds of economists polled by Bloomberg think that the Federal Reserve will announce a new round of bond purchases tomorrow.

More details in the plea agreement signed by Peregrine Financial Group founder Russell Wasendorf Sr., who faces up to 50 years in prison under a deal with prosecutors.

Zuck spoke; Facebook shares rose.

Plaintiffs say that private equity firms including KKR, Silver Lake Partners and Bain Capital colluded to tamp down prices on buyout deals, according to a complaint filed in Massachusetts Federal District Court. The New York Times went to court to get the documents, which Bain lawyers worried would get washed into the election news cycle.

No one in France believes Bernard Arnault, the Louis Vuitton chief and the country's richest man, when he says he'll keep paying taxes in France once he's received Belgian nationality, according to The Financial Times. French president François Hollande has promised to tax income above 1 million euros at 75 percent.

Russell Wasendorf Sr.

There are lost assets and found assets in the bankruptcy of Peregrine Financial Group, the Iowa-based futures dealer than folded in July after the firm's founder said in a note left before his attempted suicide that he'd used a color printer to hide that his company's bank account was missing some $200 million in client funds.

Lost assets included 304 silver coins depicting characters from the children's TV show SpongeBob SquarePants, valued at about $20,000; Found assets included a baseball glove signed by former New York Yankees manager Joe Torre and baseball hall-of-famer Johnny Bench, all of which may sounds strange if you haven't been following the saga, which has included tales of Peregrine founder Russell Wasendorf's shotgun wedding, wizardry with Adobe Photoshop and catastrophic experience in Romanian real estate. Still, you take what you can get, and today the Peregrine trustee got $700,000 from the National Futures Association, an amount equal to the fine paid by Peregrine to the self-regulating organization in February. According to The Wall Street Journal:

The fine was part of a settlement of charges related to an alleged Ponzi scheme run by a customer of the brokerage. The agency charged that Peregrine didn't properly monitor and report suspicious activity, and the firm agreed to the fine without admitting or denying the allegations.

Now, if we could only track down that crafty real estate agent.

Update: Mr. Wasendorf has reached a plea deal in which "he admits to mail fraud, embezzlement and making false statements," according to Bloomberg.

There was Mr. Wassendorf's claim—made in a note left before his attempted suicide—that he'd used a scanner, Photoshop and a fake P.O. Box to keep regulators from learning that the firm was missing more than $200 million in client funds. And reports that the Peregrine founder had squandered tens of millions of dollars in Romanian real estate. And there was the matter of the commemorative silver coins, stamped with characters from SpongeBob Squarepants, that the firm's bankruptcy trustee listed among the firm's remaining assets.

But fewer cartoon coins than previously thought, according to a filing by the trustee:Hundreds of SpongeBob SquarePants silver coins thought to be in the possession of Peregrine Financial Group, the bankrupt commodities futures trading firm, have gone missing. The disclosure that 304 silver coins sporting the image of TV cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants could not be located was made in a court filing on Thursday by Peregrine Financial's bankruptcy trustee. Thirty-nine ounces of gold were also missing.

The gold, according to Reuters, is worth about $66,000 at today's prices; the SpongeBob coins retail at about $20,000. There's more bad news in the filing, with firm assets totaling about $270 million, less than the $500 million to $1 billion previously estimated.

Among the more unusual assets that were found: A baseball glove signed by former Yankees manager Joe Torre and Hall of Famer Johnny Bench, and more than 100 Internet domain names, including pfgsucks.com—a web address whose value only figures to increase.

How to define 'subprime?' The answer may determine the fate of the government's case against three Freddie Mac executives alleged to have misled mortgage investors.

Citi became the first U.S. lender to issue it's own credit card in China, Bloomberg reports.

George Soros disclosed a 7.85 percent stake in Manchester United, the British soccer club that began trading on New York Stock Exchange on Aug. 10.

Felix Salmon says Man U's fluctuating share price is another good argument to keep investors away from initial public offerings.

The regulator tasked with overseeing audits of brokerage firms such as Peregrine Financial Group, the Iowa-based futures broker that shuttered last month after it's founder attempted suicide, has disturbing news, Floyd Norris reports in The Times. Every audit reviewed by Public Company Accounting Oversight Board inspectors showed a failure to take proper efforts to verify financial statements or ensure that the audited firms had sufficient capital on hand.

Since the London Whale capsized Jamie Dimon's reputation, Wall Street has struggled to put forth a replacement statesmen, according to Bloomberg.

Despite new law that may allow IPO bankers to publish research on offerings they underwrite as soon as, or even before, shares begin trading, banks have informally agreed to a quiet period of 25 days, The Wall Street Journal reports.

In an about face, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway terminated $8.25 billion in credit default swaps on municipal debt. If Mr. Buffett has doubts about munis, should you too?

Best Buy reported second-quarter profit fell 90 percent on restructuring charges and week sales. Good news for Richard Schulze?

Spain's short-term borrowing costs fell as markets bet that the European Central Bank would intervene in sovereign debt markets.

Silver SpongeBob SquarePants coins minted by a private company in New Zealand were among assets seized by FBI agents from Peregrine Financial Group after its chief confessed to nearly 20 years of fraud last week. ...A four-coin set of SpongeBob Squarepants, housed in a "distinctive" treasure chest, went for $259, according to a website that displays both the PFGBest logo and that of the New Zealand Mint. Each coin in the set shows a character from the Nickelodeon animated series and bears the inscription "IN SPONGEBOB WE TRUST."

And from the website of PFG Precious Metals Inc.:

Currency takes on all the right angles as sea sponge, fry cook, and all-around swell guy, SpongeBob SquarePants, is immortalized on a square, legal tender bullion coin. With coins featuring three of his closest pals, the entire SpongeBob Coin Set is housed in a distinctive treasure chest. Even the Flying Dutchman wouldn’t want to keep this booty buried!

Mr. Wasendorf, you'll recall, is the founder of Peregrine Financial Group, or PFGBest, the Iowa-based futures broker alleged to have misappropriated $200 million in client funds. Mr. Wasendorf attempted suicide earlier this month as his scheme was about to be exposed, explaining in a note that he'd perpetrated his fraud with Photoshop and a fake P.O. Box. According to one report, he lost something like $100 million in Romanian real estate.

You can't make this shit up.

Currency takes on all the right angles as sea sponge, fry cook, and all-around swell guy, SpongeBob SquarePants, is immortalized on a square, legal tender bullion coin. With coins featuring three of his closest pals, the entire SpongeBob Coin Set is housed in a distinctive treasure chest. Even the Flying Dutchman wouldn’t want to keep this booty buried!

Why, yes, Brian Fox told The Observer. Yes it could.

Mr. Fox is the founder and chief marketing officer at Confirmation.com, the company whose system for electronic confirmation the National Futures Association was in the process of adopting when it stumbled upon Mr. Wasendorf's fraud. Mr. Fox said his company's clearinghouse made auditing more efficient, and was a step on the path towards "constant transparency." That's a story for another day.

For the moment we wanted to share with you a presentation Mr. Fox made last year, in which he teaches a room full of auditors to create a phony stand-in for the website of their favorite lender. Paper, after all, is dying, and as Mr. Fox told us, "If a fraudster can't go one way, he goes the other."

Maybe start with a smaller bank, or a credit union. After that, the sky's the limit!

Apex Bulk Carriers, an international owner of large shipping vessels, also signed a lease to take up the entire 11^th floor.

681 Fifth Avenue is filling up quick.

Altum Capital Management, a boutique finance firm, was drawn to the boutique feel of 681 Fifth Avenue, said Studley broker Lance Leighton, who with Evan Margolin represented the firm.

“They liked the high ceilings,” said Mr. Leighton. “It was very boutique; kind of what they were looking for.”

Altum will occupy the entire 15^th floor, and Peregrine will occupy the entire seventh floor. Terms of the lease were not available.

The announcement came just a few weeks after Belstaff agreed to take up three floors in the Fifth Avenue building, which owner Metropole Realty Advisors had purposefully positioned as a luxury building for small-yet-prestigious clients.

After Metropole Realty Advisors 681 Fifth Avenue, the former site of The Metropolitan Museum of Art,  for $86 million in 2005, Chief Executive Robert Siegel said the company spent two years and $20 million completely refurbishing the building.

“There is no old aspect to the building other than its charm, the front façade and the floor slabs,” said Mr. Siegel at the time of the deal. He could not be reached for comment.

Belstaff, a nearly-century old motorcycle jacket maker that was bought by Labelux Group for $161 million this summer, took floors 8, 9, and 10 of the building, totaling 17,505 square feet.

The only vacancy in 681 Fifth Avenue is a duplex penthouse, which offers sweeping views of Central Park and Fifth Avenue and includes a separate roof garden totaling 3,000 square feet.

Bruce Mosler, Arthur Mirante, Cynthia Foster, Mark Mandell, Ethan Silverstein, and Ashlea Aaron of Cushman & Wakefield represented Metropole Realty Advisors in the deal.

Michelle Walker, also of Cushman & Wakefield, represented Peregrine. David Rosenbloom of Cushman & Wakefield represented Apex.