Bank of America has been the go-to institution to mop up the carnage from a lot of the rest of the banking center. Remember, they ‘bought’ Merrill Lynch, with a lot of government help, rather than letting in swirl down the drain like Lehman Brothers. Today its stock has dropped 25% because BofA has now discovered that losses at Merrill (which it only finally bought on January 1st) were much worse than they’d realized. And they need to go back to the Treasury for a big new infusion of money.
