SOURCE:  PR Newswire 

PORTLAND, Ore., July 24, 2007 

Parish & Company strongly opposes the News Corporations (NWS) attempt to 
purchase the Dow Jones Corporation (DJ) on anti-trust grounds, not only 
due to Rupert Murdoch's existing media holdings and related 
controversies, including FOX News and its Iraq coverage, yet also the 
potential for abuse due to the related impact on public companies by 
numerous hedge and private equity funds.

We rely on three often overlooked institutions: the business media; our 
corporate congress as managed by proxy firms; and finally accounting 
rules defined by the FASB and SEC.

Business media consolidation clearly presents a major risk to this 
system. Some may say, if Berkshire Hathaway's (Brka) Warren Buffett can 
own Business Wire in addition to having major stakes in the Washington 
Post and the bond rating agency, Moody's, while simultaneously operating 
an insurance based conglomerate interacting with all three, then why 
can't Murdoch own Dow Jones (DJ)? The reason is simple. This level of 
consolidation must stop now, otherwise, we put the overall financial 
markets at risk.

Today our corporate congress is dominated by two proxy firms. One such 
firm, ISS, is owned by unregulated hedge funds and the other, Glass 
Lewis, is owned by a Chinese Bank. This is the equivalent of outsourcing 
both the US House and Senate to a foreign nation and Caribbean Island 
based private partnerships. In either case, we lose necessary transparency.

At the same time, the SEC has proposed scrapping the FASB accounting 
rules and adopting looser untested international accounting standards in 
an environment where the once mighty Big 8 Accounting firms have been 
reduced to the “Final 4” due to mergers and the failure of Arthur Andersen.

International rules would include allowing technology companies such as 
Microsoft (MSFT), Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Intel (INTC) to capitalize 
more R&D expenses, thereby boosting profits.

This is exactly what the Japanese did in the 1980's and while many refer 
to this period as the Japanese Banking crisis, it was really an 
accounting crisis in which the Japanese created assets by capitalizing 
expenses and then leveraged loans off these assets which should have 
been expensed.

The time has come for the United States to again lead by example and a 
good start would be the SEC, DOJ, FTC, IRS, FBI and other agencies 
working together to promote competition and disclsoure aimed at 
preventing numerous corporate debacles and protecting the integrity of 
our free market based system.

This collaboration could begin by discussing the biggest tax loophole in 
30 years. One that has received almost no media coverage, that is, the 
ability to aggregate tax losses from failing and defunct companies into 
a partnership and then merge profitable companies in, to be converted to 
tax exempt status for years. This is an unfair competitive advantage and 
corruption of our free market system that allows such partnerships to 
lower prices from non-payment of taxes, drive more competitive tax 
paying companies from the market and later raise prices again.

Parish & Company refers to this practice as hedge and private equity 
funds' “secret sauce” when used in conjunction with allocating tax 
benefits that can not be used by tax exempt public pensions, the primary 
investors in such funds, to the funds' general partners.

Rather than spend energy debating the “Blackstone (BX) Tax,” Congress 
should stabilize the corporate tax system with two changes. The first 
would require amortizing purchased tax losses over 20 years and the 
second would be to make all annual compensation in excess of $10 million 
non-deductible to the issuing company, whether the income is wage or 
stock based.

Bill Parish is an independent SEC registered investment advisor based in 
Portland, Oregon. Clients maintain accounts at leading discount brokers 
including Charles Schwab (SCHW) and TD Ameritrade (AMTD) and his service 
includes a written guarantee that no fees are accepted from these or any 
investment firms on client assets. Neither Bill nor any client own 
positions in the Dow Jones Corporation other than via passively managed 
index funds.