The accounting rules (GAAP) have only a loose correlation to how most modern large companies actually operate the levers of their businesses. Management teams of well-run companies spend very little time thinking about the formal financial statements.
Accounting bears the same relationship to actually running a business that the Efficient Market Hypothesis does to actually effectively investing -- which is to say, almost nothing.
Accounting bears the same relationship to actually running a business that the Efficient Market Hypothesis does to actually effectively investing -- which is to say, almost nothing.