But "even this year . . . you'll see the earnings power of this machine, and then you'll see it really start to come to fruition in 2010," Lewis said. "And then 2011 should be the year that you get a lot of this behind you and see the full earnings power of Bank of America."
Billions of dollars are locked up in loan loss reserves, Lewis added. A loan loss reserve is essentially an account set aside for the losses a bank incurs when loans don't get repaid.
"You could actually create huge amounts of equity by just letting the banks use their reserves," he said.
Industry analysts, however, were skeptical about the outlook for the company, which is still absorbing two troublesome acquisitions: the brokerage Merrill Lynch and the mortgage lender Countrywide Financial.
Loan losses are expected to keep soaring, and those reserves will be needed, said Christopher Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics.
"I understand that everybody wants to bring confidence up, but we have to have some basis for confidence," Whalen said. "It's irresponsible for an executive of a public company to be speculating in the way that he is. He should be more contrite, more circumspect than he is."
This week, the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index of home prices in 20 major cities showed a record decline of 19 percent for the three months ended in January compared to the same period last year.
Bank of America shares rose 19 cents to $7.24 on the New York Stock Exchange.
