Not WaMu, nor Bear, nor crunching of credit can stop Jamie Dimon and J.P. Morgan (JPM) from reporting a profit!

Third quarter earnings per share came in at 11 cents, which doesn’t beat what was expected for this quarter originally (37 cents) but certainly beats the pants off analysts’ revised estimates (which were for a loss of 21 cents). However, they missed on revenue ($14.74 bn vs expected $16 bn). But hey, in this climate, if you can beat on earnings even on lower revenue, I gotta withhold the vitriol. They took another $3.6bn in in writedowns, which brings their subprime-slime writedown total to just over $12bn. That’s about 1/4 of what Citigroup (C) has written off.

Much like everyone, Dimon fears forecasting:

“Given the uncertainty in the capital markets, housing sector and economy overall, it is reasonable to expect reduced earnings for our firm over the next few quarters,” Jamie Dimon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said in a press release.

“However, with a total loan loss allowance of $19 billion (including Washington Mutual) and an 8.9% Tier 1 capital ratio, we feel well-positioned to handle the turbulent environment and, most importantly, to continue to invest in our businesses and serve our clients well,” Dimon added.

Something tells me they can’t keep Magic 8-balls in stock in the toy stores in New York City these days, what with nobody being able to put together a financial model for Q4. I just asked mine what it saw for JPM for Q4 ’08 and for ’09 and it is like, ask again later. Hey, keeping with the glass half full theme, at least that’s not a bearish assessment!