Bank of America at this juncture epitomizes a never-before-seen disparity between an economy that just underwent the fastest, deepest dive ever, and consumers who keep paying their bills as if the good times never stopped rolling. Like all of the nation’s lenders, BofA is tasked with forecasting the trend, that more than any other, will determine the course for the recovery: how high the coming wave of losses on credit cards, car loans, mortgages, and the like will rise once the government’s unprecedented support in the form of cash payments, extra jobless benefits, and big subsidies to small business run out.
