If you’ve been following along with my debt relief blog posts then you’ve probably already noticed a pattern of pointing the finger of blame at the credit card industry whenever the topic of American financial woes enters the equation. What you may not have known is that the average American household with at least a single credit card has approximately $9000 in credit card debt!

This number is stifling in its own right but I’ve dug up some even more alarming statistics that I believe you’ll find helpful.

Total US consumer debt (which does not include mortgage debt) reached $2.46 Trillion in June 2007, up from $2.398 Trillion at the end of 2006 (Source: Federal Reserve)

Total US consumer revolving debt reached $904 Billion in June 2007, up from $879 billion at the end of 2006 (Source: Federal Reserve)

On average, today’s consumer has a total of 13 credit obligations on record at a credit bureau. These include credit cards (such as department store charge cards, gas cards, or bank cards) and installment loans (auto loans, mortgage loans, student loans, etc.). Not included are savings and checking accounts (typically not reported to a credit bureau). Of these 13 credit obligations, 9 are likely to be credit cards and 4 are likely to be installment loans. (Source: myfico.com)

The typical consumer has access to approximately $19,000 on all credit cards combined. More than half of all people with credit cards are using less than 30% of their total credit card limit. Just over 1 in 7 are using 80% or more of their credit card limit. (Source: myfico.com)

U.S. consumers racked up an estimated $51 billion worth of fast food on their personal credit and debit cards in 2006, compared to $33.2 billion one-year ago. (Source: www.carddata.com)

Nearly 1 in every 3 consumer purchases in the United States is made with a payment card—including credit, debit, and prepaid products. (Source: Visa USA)

Consumers carry more than 1 billion Visa cards worldwide—more than 450 million of those cards are in the United States (Source: Visa USA)

U.S. Visa cardholders alone conduct more than $1 trillion in annual volume (Source: Visa USA)

The bottom line: Credit cards don’t go off and charge themselves! Be smart with your plastic so that you become the exception, not the rule in these alarming statistics.

There is a raging debate with a thousand fingers pointing over whether a housing bubble even exists and who’s to blame. Federal Reserve Gov. Kevin Warsh recently stated the “market turmoil and economic uncertainty” is not caused solely by the subprime lending free-for-all, which makes sense. There must be several contributing factors.

It does seem there was plenty of writing on the wall to slow subprime lending long before the bottom fell out. However, the same applies for investors as well as ignorant consumers who didn’t educate themselves on the homebuying process and allowed themselves to be vulnerable.

Last but not least, as painful as it may be to admit, homebuilders definitely helped make this bed. This is another raging debate, but it cannot be denied that homebuilders contributed to the current housing surplus. Now, home starts are at a 10-year low and the National Association of Home Builders has found its members’ confidence levels at a 16-year low, The Wall Street Journal’s MarketBeat reports.

“And while builders have scaled back dramatically on housing starts and permits for additional homes to the lowest point in more than a decade, soft sales and years of overbuilding in some markets have resulted in a serious glut of new homes for sale on the market, according to government figures.”

This is a personally painful topic because I have a lot of ties to the building industry, but builders do tend to put a relentlessly positive spin on bad times. I recently interviewed one very successful builder who blamed the media for the housing market downturn. If the media would just say one positive thing about the housing market, he said, everything would turn around tomorrow. Fortunately for that builder, he was in Texas, where reality is a little less harsh than other areas of the U.S.

In their defense, builders are far from the only uber-optimists we could point to. That’s why it’s interesting to see then-and-now quotes from housing market experts, analysts and professionals.

October 2002, Alan Greenspan testifying before Congress:

“We’ve looked at the bubble question, and we’ve concluded that it is most unlikely, mainly because, one, we have a very diverse real estate market throughout the country.”

Sept. 16, 2007, Alan Greenspan in a Financial Times interview:

“The decline in house prices ‘is going to be larger than most people expect,’ Alan Greenspan has told the Financial Times, admitting that there was a bubble in the US housing market.”

Sept. 4, 2004, David Lereah, then-chief economist for National Association of Realtors:

“There is no national price bubble. Never has been; never will be.”

Sept. 23, 2007, David Lereah to The New York Times:

“Even the people that were talking about booms busting, my goodness they were talking about it in 2001 and 2002. And they were wrong for four years and they only became right at the end of 2004.”

Dec. 2006, Robert Toll, CEO, Toll Brothers, Inc., largest U.S. luxury homebuilder, in fourth quarter 2006 conference call:

“We don’t think it’s illogical to assume that pent-up [housing] demand is building.”

Sept. 18, 2007, Robert Toll, quoted by Reuters News Service re: the Fed’s decision to cut interest rate by half a percentage point:

“I would have done a quarter instead of a half because it signals we’re in deep doodoo.”

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go bury my head in the sand. Come get me when it’s over.

The Consumerist had an interesting post recently. It seems the recent fight against credit card companies recruiting students on campus has legislators up in arms and lenders getting creative.

The Iowa City Press-Citizen reports that state legislators are aiming to curb Bank of America’s credit card recruiting efforts on state college campuses. Ohio Attorney General Mark Dunn recently sued credit marketers with Citibank ties for advertising “Free Burritos” available to hungry Ohio State students. The advertisement failed to mention that students would be required to complete a credit card application.

Syracuse University has a ban already in place against on-campus credit card marketers. Marketers are also prohibited from giving gifts in exchange for credit applications under university guidelines. Citi decided to go just off campus to the Pita Pit and hand out free food in exchange for the completion of forms that allow mtvU credit card applications to be mailed to the consumer. Sneaky, sneaky. Of course, the event was heavily marketed with on-campus flyers, but the actual dirty deeds were done off campus.

Really, something must be done, and sooner rather than later. Legislators seem to be slowly trodding their way toward that goal.