Okay. Although I know that you have already written down the auction rate securities to zero, I was just curious your opinion if and when we might see some resolution on auction rate pricing.
David J. Parrin
Craig, we haven’t written them to zero, we’ve written them down about $30 million. The original amount is a little over $60 million. There are some settlements and we need to make a decision on that in the fourth quarter. I think if we see any up tick in the valuation it would be in the fourth quarter.
Craig Maurer – Calyon Securities
Okay, thanks guys.
David J. Parrin
Thanks Craig.
Operator
We’ll next go to Anurag Rana with KeyBanc.
Anurag Rana – KeyBanc Capital Markets
Good afternoon. This is Rana Anurag. Question on your payment systems business, I know you talked about not giving long-term margin guidance but can you give us any sense of what one might expect as far as sustainable margins in your payment systems business?
Anthony P. Ryan
We’re not giving projections or guidance into 2009 and obviously the top line revenue will be affected by where we’re investing in cash and cash equivalents and the Fed Funds rate, but we’re really looking more at the net margin of the business and as you’ll recall when we went through our re-pricing of the official check business we re-priced that at Fed Funds less about 100 basis points. We’re just South of that in terms of the average payout rate is more like Fed Funds less 85. So we’re really focused on the net spread in the business. There will be some fluctuations and obviously as the top line fluctuates with the lower rate environment that does affect how your margins look. That’s one of the reasons that we’re not getting into projecting out the margins in our business.
Anurag Rana – KeyBanc Capital Markets
Great and is your current expectation to keep that business or do you have any plans to get rid of it?
Anthony P. Ryan
I think first and foremost it’s now profitable and it has very minimal risk in terms of the portfolio and that was really the goal was to do those two things and it’s throwing off cash and we’re using that to continue to invest in our business model and to service our debt. So, we believe that we have this business in a position where it’s very stable and it’s a recurring revenue stream so we like the affects of what we’ve seen through the re-pricing and I will also say that we’ve had very good retention rates after the re-pricing with our customers. I think as anything that we have in our product portfolio we’ll continue to examine the fit over the long haul and make determinations as the situation merits.
Anurag Rana – KeyBanc Capital Markets
Thank you.
Anthony P. Ryan |