Joe's stock would fall, suggested that the company should have written down the value of its assets by about two-thirds.

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That book value has been serially written down to reflect ever-weakening real estate prices, but would be written back up when housing prices start to rebound.

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But he has written down the value of Dow Jones, owner of the Wall Street Journal - and he lost a fortune on the sale of MySpace, one of the original social networks.

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