The irony is not lost on bankers, brokers and traders at One Bryant Park. The billions of dollars that Bank of America Merrill Lynch is earning from its businesses on Wall Street are being wiped out by the red ink flowing out of Countrywide. Bonuses are on the line. So are jobs.

“It’s debilitating and depressing,” says one Merrill veteran, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “People are very angry. How could we not be?”

Many Americans who don’t work in the financial industry — people who are struggling to make ends meet, or to find jobs, or to keep them — are more than angry. But this is Wall Street, where money is the measure and where, even in this post-bailout era, top producers expect to be paid, and paid well.

In hindsight, many agree that Mr. Moynihan’s predecessor, Kenneth D. Lewis, paid too much for Merrill Lynch: $50 billion in stock. The outcry over the deal and subsequent bailout led to investigations by state and federal regulators. A lawsuit brought by Bank of America shareholders contends that Bank of America tried to keep the losses at Merrill quiet, and seeks $50 billion in damages.

So it might come as a surprise that Bank of America Merrill Lynch is actually thriving. Measured by fees collected for Wall Street work, it is second only to JPMorgan Chase and well ahead of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

The global banking and markets unit of Bank of America, which includes many of the operations it acquired in the Merrill merger, earned $3.7 billion in the first half of 2011. With help from the Thundering Herd, the bank’s assets under management have increased to $2.2 trillion from $2 trillion in the last year, despite the turbulence in the financial markets.