That’s what the Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis thinks is acceptable. It’s increasingly unclear why anyone besides Lewis is convinced he is the leader to move the bank forward. The stock is sitting well below at $5.76, down from a 52 week high of $43.46 and it’s anyone’s guess how many more surprises exist at Merrill Lynch which he had to purchase. Even before Merrill, there was the purchase of Countrywide. The sense of entitlement among CEOs like Lewis simply does not register with the rest of the country. If the best thing someone can say about you is that “someone else *could* have lost even more money, it’s a challenge to see how you can keep your job.

Six months ago, Ken Lewis, chairman and CEO of Bank of America, was heralded as a Wall Street savior, snapping up a tottering Merrill Lynch in a high-stakes deal and ensuring the future of his company while some of the country’s most storied financial institutions fell apart around him.

In September, Bank of America acquired Merrill for $29 a share, or about $44 billion, and a seemingly ascendant Lewis bragged to reporters: “We are good at this.”

What a difference a few months makes. Despite a good day Thursday, Bank of America shares have fallen 84 percent since Oct. 1. The Merrill deal has been scrutinized by Congress and the New York attorney general, and — adding insult to injury — the bank, like some of its top competitors, risks a takeover by the federal government.

In the face of dramatic losses to the company’s stock price, Lewis, 61, remains bullishly optimistic. But many shareholders and observers are far less certain that the bank can weather the storm of the financial crisis.

Laying the blame squarely on Lewis, who succeeded the larger-than-life Hugh McColl in 2002, some doubt the current CEO will be able to keep his job if the company continues to hemorrhage money, while other investors are calling for his resignation outright.

“It is going to be very difficult to watch the stock price go from $40 to $5 and be able to survive that,” said Paul Miller, a banking analyst at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. “This is his baby. He did the acquisitions of Merrill, Countrywide and LaSalle Bank. How anyone can make the decisions he made and survive is baffling.”

Beginning last summer, as pillars of the economy fell, from Countrywide — then the nation’s largest mortgage lender — to Merrill — a stalwart of the financial services industry — Lewis bought them up, putting a damper on the bank’s balance sheet.