Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Kenneth D. Lewis said Tuesday that he wanted to start repaying $45 billion in federal bailout funds next month, after the government's "stress test" of his bank, and to give back the remainder as soon as the nation's wobbly financial system is stabilized.

In interviews with The Los Angeles Times, Lewis defended Bank of America's much-criticized acquisitions of Countrywide Financial Corp. and Merrill Lynch & Co. as strategically sound in the long run. And he said a cluster of financial indicators — higher stock prices, slowing of home price declines and improvements in certain consumer delinquency gauges — "leads me to think we're starting to see the bottom" of the recession.

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