After a mid-summer spurt, Americans retreated in August as revolving credit took a dive. During August, consumers lopped-off $3.4 billion in revolving credit, mostly credit card debt. One-year ago, consumers added $2.3 billion in revolving credit during August. At an annualized rate, consumer revolving credit decreased 5.4% during August. According to figures released yesterday by the Federal Reserve, at the end of August 2004 Americans owed $740.8 billion in revolving credit, compared to $744.2 billion for July. One-year ago revolving credit stood at $729.1 billion. Bank credit card debt (excluding store and gas credit cards) at the end of the second quarter was $672.1 billion, or roughly 90% of total revolving credit, according to CardData (www.carddata.com). At the end of August, Americans were $2037.9 billion in debt, excluding home mortgages.
| REVOLVING CREDIT HISTORICAL ($billions) |
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| Aug 04 | Jul 04 | Jun 04 | May 04 | Apr 04 | Mar 04 | Feb 04 |
| GRWTH: | -5.4% | 9.0% | -0.1 | -1.0 | -5.3 | 5.5 | -0.6 |
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| $OWED: | $740.8 | 744.2 | 738.6 | 738.6 | 740.9 | 744.2 | 750.4 |
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|
| Jan 04 | Dec 03 | Nov 03 | Oct 03 | Sep 03 | Aug 03 | Jul 03 |
| GRWTH: | 13.0% | 3.3 | 4.9 | 4.1 | 6.8 | 3.4 | 1.4 |
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| $OWED: | $753.0 | 734.1 | 743.8 | 740.5 | 730.7 | 729.1 | 726.8 |
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| Source: Federal Reserve; revised figures as of 10/07/04; |
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| For complete historical data visit CardData (www.carddata.com) |
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