But the deal they have on the table, if accepted, would mean that Comcast got these assets cheap.
It is true that some of these institutions will find new ways, create new products, buy assets cheap, but that lesson has been learned.
The challenge is to make such assets cheap enough to attract private investors without forcing the entire banking sector to make steep and immediate reductions in the value of their whole property portfolios.
The question that naturally arises is whether the existing grocery chains won't end up buying Webvan's assets cheap.
One of the world's biggest investors in distressed assets, particularly real estate, Grayken believes in buying assets cheap and selling as quickly as possible.
But the world's largest mining company, Rio Tinto, had already practiced a model of buying mining assets cheap during the downward spiral in commodity prices and keeping production costs low enough to make money at the pit bottom.
The export-oriented production regions in China have benefited from the "strategic coupling" process of regional assets (cheap labour and land) and the strategic needs of GPNs (cost-down and time-to-market) through conducive institutions (processing trade regime) (Yang 2012).
But technology has reduced transaction costs, making sharing assets cheaper and easier than ever and therefore possible on a much larger scale.
One reason is that foreign investors have been attracted to the weakened pound, which makes British exports and assets cheaper.
For a long time it seemed like a one-way bet, with homeowners able to buy an appreciating asset with cheap debt.
