Old school fixed asset accounting

It's hard to think about when I was going to classes at Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville way back in the 1970s. That does now seem way way back, a thousand years ago. Why, when I took classes on subjects such as fixed asset accounting, we were told that although some aspects of accounting have to be simplified to be realistic (you can't adjust General Motors' balance sheet every time an employee breaks a pen), you still try to come up with figures that are realistic and accurate. We weren't taught how to manipulate earnings so that stock prices could be forced up to make a lot of money for the big executives. Or how to turn loans into assets through off-balance sheet bookkeeping. I still haven't figured out how Enron did that one.