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Investments
3 Months Ended
Feb. 25, 2012
Investments [Abstract]  
Investment [Text Block]
Investments

We own investments in marketable securities that have been designated as "available for sale" in accordance with ASC 320, Investments-Debt and Equity Securities. Available for sale securities are carried at fair value with the unrealized gains and losses reported in "Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss)", a component of stockholders' equity.

At February 25, 2012, we held $10.0 million (par value) of investments comprised of tax-exempt ARS, which are variable-rate debt securities and have a long-term maturity with the interest rate being reset through Dutch auctions that are typically held every 7, 28 or 35 days. Prior to February 2008, these securities traded at par and are currently callable at par at the option of the issuer. Interest is typically paid at the end of each auction period or semiannually. The ARS we hold are AAA/Aaa rated by Standard & Poor's Ratings Services and Moody's Investors Service, Inc., respectively, with most collateralized by student loans guaranteed by the U.S. Government under the Federal Family Education Loan Program.

Since February 2008, most ARS auctions have failed for these securities and there is no assurance that future auctions will succeed and, as a result, our ability to liquidate our investment and fully recover the par value in the near term may be limited or nonexistent. We have no reason to believe that any of the underlying issuers of our ARS are presently at risk of payment default. We have continued to receive interest payments on the ARS in accordance with their terms. We believe we will ultimately be able to liquidate our ARS related investments without significant loss primarily due to the collateral securing our ARS. However, redemption could take until final maturity of the ARS (up to 30 years) to realize the par value of our investments. Due to the changes and uncertainty in the ARS market, we believe the recovery period for these investments is likely to be longer than 12 months and as a result, we have classified these investments as long-term as of February 25, 2012.

At February 25, 2012, there was insufficient observable ARS market information available to determine the fair value of our long‑term ARS investments. Therefore, we estimated fair value by incorporating assumptions that market participants would use in their estimates of fair value. Some of these assumptions included credit quality, final stated maturities, estimates on the probability of the issue being called prior to final maturity, impact due to extended periods of maximum auction rates and broker quotes from independent evaluators. Based on this analysis, at February 25, 2012 we recorded a temporary impairment of $47,000 related to our long-term ARS investments of $10.0 million (par value).