Bank of America seems to be everywhere these days -- buying Countrywide Financial or bailing out investment icon Merrill Lynch.

But now, the Charlotte-based bank is applying a little of its largesse to the Average Joe. In a national program, it will allow people who took out questionable loans with Countrywide to renegotiate at better terms.

As part of a settlement in a lawsuit against Countrywide, Bank of America has agreed to renegotiate mortgages for nearly 400,000 people who occupy their homes and took out subprime or adjustable rate loans from Countrywide. About 8,000 of them are in Virginia.

Ironically, the program seems to be an Everyman approach to the “Friends of Angelo” program. In that, “friends” of former Countrywide  CEO Angelo Mozilo, including prominent Congressmen, got good rates on their mortgages. Mozilo and his firm went down after mismanaging the risky but sometimes highly profitable subprime market.

The Bank of America program seems to be an exception to the rule these days since bailouts seem to apply to large financial houses and not homeowners, but it arguably gets to the heart of the crisis a lot faster. Being under lawsuit pressure also helps.

One question is how many more bailouts Bank of America can afford. Its third-quarter net income dropped to $1.18 billion, or 15 cents a share, from $3.70 billion, or 82 cents a share, a year ago. The bank is also selling $10 billion in stock to raise capital.