Lies, Mark To Market and Orphan Months

I'd seen some discussion about this but was unprepared for NPR to be reporting the Wells Fargo and Golman Sachs alleged profits as cheerful signs of recovery yesterday.
In case you're interested, go here for a start.
Killer quote:

Since this accounting change, we've seen two major institutions prettying up their financial statements. Wells Fargo recorded record profits, and its stock jumped more than 20% in one day on the news. Goldman Sachs also reported tremendous earnings, surprising in these difficult times, and sold $5 billion of stock in the secondary market immediately afterwards
Both banks have used odd accounting tricks designed to obscure the truth of their status to investors. Earnings season just started, so we'll soon see if this is a trend, but so far, I'm not encouraged. Journalist Jonathan Weil, who helped uncover the Enron scandal, pointed out that much of the increase in Wells Fargo's earnings came from a new accounting term called 'Level 3' gains and its application to Wells Fargo's mortgage servicing portfolio. "So what are Level 3 gains?" asks Weil. "Pretty much whatever companies want them to be."
Floyd Norris of the New York Times noted that Goldman Sachs used a more prosaic trick having nothing to do with mark to market accounting - the company moved its fiscal year up a month and simply left out its losses from December, which is now known as an 'orphan month'. Is the rule that says a year has twelve months also open to subjective judgment?