Now, ING is shopping for another investment-banking bargain.
But the banks' bargaining chip is their contribution to Britain's economy.
It also has a record of trying to care for the poor by subsidising some goods and maintaining at least the promise if not the reality of government welfare services.But inevitably the party also includes opportunists, including millionaires who owe their fortunes to sweetheart loans from state-owned banks, bargain-basement sales of state land or no-bid contracts from state agencies.
The government acquired a more modest share in the nation's largest bank, Bank of America, but only because they refused to bargain with the banks the way banks bargained with their customers.
I won't weigh in on the debate over the quality of the stress tests themselves, except to repeat what many observers have noted: the regulators didn't have the resources to make a really careful assessment of the banks' assets, and in any case they allowed the banks to bargain over what the results would say.
The time for the banks to bargain over dividend policy was last weekend, during negotiations on the structure of the bail-out.
Private equity firms can tap into huge pools of capital and they have been yearning to buy banks at bargain prices.
The surprisingly tough rules came as a blow to high-rolling private equity firms, which control vast amounts of capital and have been pushing for greater ability to buy up failed banks at bargain prices from the government.
Margins would certainly be better, and operations would be much simpler, but, as we've argued before, Christmas shopping, banking & bargain-hunting would be much worse.
If the banks were bargains in the summer, they were even greater bargains in the fall.
Every bank has bargained for this," said the official, who declined to be named.
