When Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs’ chairman and chief executive, arrived at the Rayburn building on Capitol Hill in late 2010, he was battered and bruised. At the time his bank was viewed as a vivid example of Wall Street misbehaviour. In the previous months it had been sued by regulators, flayed by lawmakers then damaged by the passage of Dodd-Frank, a law that would curtail its freedom in the name of preventing another financial crisis.

Mr Blankfein was going to meet its co-author Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the House’s financial services committee. Goldman Sachs had concerns over the new oversight regime, but it could not afford to look intransigent. “I’m for smart regulation,” Mr Blankfein said in the private encounter, trying to sound co-operative. “And I’m for fucking dumb regulation,” Mr Frank replied sarcastically.

If the Obama years were a harsh time for Goldman in Washington, the election of Donald Trump has provided a new opening. Not only does the president regularly rail against “job-killing regulations”, he has made two Goldman alumni his point men on financial regulation. Gary Cohn, Mr Blankfein’s former deputy, heads the national economic council, while Steven Mnuchin, once its chief information officer, is Treasury secretary.