????過去的一年中，如果對摩根大通（JPMorgan Chase）的了解只限于一、二條重大新聞，那你可能會認為這家美國最大的銀行遇到了難關。

????其實并不盡然。周二，這家銀行披露，它2013年實現利潤近180億美元。這比牙買加全國的GDP還要高30億美元左右。因此可以說，吉米?戴蒙，你干得漂亮。

????2013年的成績很好，只是利潤低于2012年的210億美元。不過，2013年的業績中包含了摩根大通用于了結訴訟的全部開銷，其中大部分官司都源自5年多以前的出現的問題。也就是說，如果剔除這部分支出，這家銀行的利潤水平實際上要好很多很多。

????問題在于，訴訟費用并不是摩根大通唯一的非經營性損益。

????那么2013年這家銀行的利潤到底有多少呢？人們在努力尋找這個答案的過程中會發現銀行的財務報表是多么的撲朔迷離。我們所有人都應該對此感到擔心。如果不認真探究，就無從掌握一家銀行的經營業績，也無法判斷它是否處于困境之中；要是連這些情況都掌握不了，我們又怎么判斷危機是不是即將來臨呢？這方面實在是障礙重重。不過，我盡了最大努力來撥開重重迷霧，結果表明，摩根大通在這一年里表現良好。雖然和2012年相比沒有大幅度改善，但要好于這家銀行財務數據所體現的水平。

????一年多一點兒之前，我曾對摩根大通的業績進行過類似的分析，目的是弄清楚它怎樣通過一系列做賬手法讓60億美元的交易損失消失于無形。鑒于2013年出現了巨額訴訟費用和大量利潤，我認為值得再次進行這樣的分析。但這次我得到的結論和一年前正好相反。

????我著手的地方是它180億美元的全年利潤。要計算摩根大通的實際利潤，最簡單的辦法應該是用這個數字加上法院判處的220億美元罰款。但這樣做行不通。因為2013年摩根大通并沒有繳納全部罰款，至少從賬面上看是這樣。各家銀行一直在積累訴訟準備金，也在不斷地使用這些準備金。因此，2013年還沒有到來時摩根大通就已經支付了一部分罰款，并將它納入了自己的損益表。

????在這220億美元罰款中，2013年繳納的約有一半。但這還不是問題的全部。訴訟費用會降低利潤，因此通常來說會讓摩根大通在稅收方面受益，從而抵消一部分成本。正常情況下，鑒于摩根大通的平均稅率約為28%，剔除訴訟成本并考慮到稅收因素后，我們可以在它的全年利潤上加上80億美元。

????2013年，摩根大通支付了約90億美元的罰款及和解費。但作為處罰的一部分，摩根大通同意這筆開支不享受稅收減免。但在繳納這些款項之前，這家銀行就已經把它納入了財報。而且在做賬時，摩根大通以為這筆費用可以抵稅。因此，按2013年110億美元的訴訟支出計算，它的抵稅額將減少5億美元。這樣，它的稅后訴訟成本約為85億美元。180億美元的賬面利潤再加上這筆成本，摩根大通的2013年利潤將達到265億美元。

????If you caught only a headline or two about JPMorgan Chase in the past year, you probably came away thinking the nation's largest bank had hit a rough patch.

????Not so much. On Tuesday, JPMorgan (JPM) said it earned nearly $18 billion in 2013. That's about $3 billion more than the GDP of Jamaica. So yeah, (Jamie Di) Mon.

????Nice year, but down from the $21 billion it made the year before. Still, 2013's financials include all the money that JPMorgan had to spend to settle its legal battles, much of which are related to events that took place more than five years ago. The implication is that if you exclude that, bank's bottom line is actually much, much better.

????The problem is legal fees are not the only one-time expense or benefit in JPMorgan's financial statements.

????So what did JPMorgan really make in 2013? Attempting to find that answer shows just how convoluted and opaque bank financial statements can be. That's something all of us should be worried about. How can we know a crisis is coming if we can't tell, without some serious detective work, what a bank made or if it is in trouble? There are simply too many obstacles. But my best attempt at looking behind the curtain tells me that the nation's largest bank had a good year, better than their reported number lets on, though still not much better than 2012.

????I did a similar analysis a little over a year ago to show how JPMorgan's $6 billion trading loss seemingly disappeared behind a number of accounting moves. Given the bank's huge legal fees and massive profits, I thought it was worthwhile to repeat the exercise. This time, though, I came to the opposite conclusion.

????Start with the $18 billion annual profit. The simplest way to get to the bank's actual earnings should be to add back JPMorgan's $22 billion in legal fines. But you can't do that. Not all of those were paid this year, at least in terms of the bank's accounting. Banks build up legal reserves over time and expense them as they go along. So, some of this year's legal fines were already paid for on the banks profit and loss statement before 2013 even began.

????Of the $22 billion, about half was paid for in 2013. But we're not there yet. Legal fees lower profits, so typically JPMorgan would get a tax benefit from paying them, offsetting some of the cost. Normally, to exclude legal costs, and factor in taxes, we would add back $8 billion, given that JPMorgan's average tax rate is around 28%.

????But as part of the punishment, JPMorgan agreed not to take a tax deduction on about $9 billion of the penalties and settlements it paid last year. But before paying out any of this money, JPMorgan had already expensed that cost on its financial statements. And when it did, it assumed that it would be able to get a tax benefit. That lowers the tax write-off that JPMorgan can take on its $11 billion in legal expenses in 2013 by $500 million, making 2013's post-tax legal costs about $8.5 billion. Add that to the $18 billion JPMorgan reported and you get $26.5 billion in profits for 2013.