According to a recent analysis of credit card delinquency data from America, consumers are rapidly falling behind on their credit card bills.

The once vain hope that a credit crisis was limited only within a subprime mortgage market can no longer be true.

While others talk about a “leaking out” of credit and financial problems into other areas, it can hardly be classified as a leak when the rate of delinquencies for account more than 30 days late goes up 26% in October from a year earlier. And for some lenders like Bank of America the leap in delinquencies was a 200% increase during the same time period.

With an estimated 61% of Americans now carrying a credit card balance from month to month, up from about 45% five years ago, it is becoming more and more evident that Americans are finding the financial pressures difficult to manage. Of that 61% of balance carrying card holders it is estimated that nearly half of them made the minimum payment or not much more.

In recent years, access to home equity loans has helped to put cash in the pockets of Americans to continue strong economic growth but with those easy loans now impossible to find more people are going to have to live within their income.

Typically at the first stages of financial pressure people will let credit card bills slide a bit and drift into the first collection bucket, more than 30 days late. Consumers are also likely to let balances drift upwards as they pay for more and more regular expenses using credit cards or easy convenience checks.

During the same October 2006 to October 2007 time period, lenders also wrote off almost $961 million, an increase of 18%.

A Capital One spokesperson claimed that the increase in delinquencies could be due to the shortening of the grace period, the numbers of days between the statement end date and the payment due date.

While that may be true, it hardly explains why such a large number of Americans are missing that due date simply because of a five day reduction in the amount of time to pay the bill.

Robert Manning, director for the Center for Consumer Financial Services at Rochester Institute of Technology was quoted as saying, “You’re looking at more and more distress - consumers desperately trying to preserve their credit lines, but there’s nowhere else to go...It’s like a game of dominoes.”

Mark Zandi, chief economist and co-founder of Economy.com stated that he felt that “credit card quality will continue to erode throughout the next year.”

The downfall for Americans is going to be the attractiveness of credit card markets by issuers, especially after the subprime mortgage mess. Not only do credit card issuers have more control over the credit card business through the easy and quick adjustment of interest and fees, but consumers seem to be particularly unsophisticated when it comes to credit card offers as if credit card common sense has been genetically removed from their DNA.

Early in 2008, following an almost Pavlovian holiday shopping season, credit card issuers that have been having trouble should brace themselves for an even steeper increase in delinquencies. Banks like Bank of America, Capital One, Discover, Advanta, GE Money Bank and HSBC should be the ones with the largest delinquency jumps in America.

In an effort to deal with these growing delinquencies we should expect to see these lenders and others to increase interest rates and fees for all customers to try to recoup losses through other avenues.

Historically, these lenders have also not had the most effective policies in attempting to assist consumers in financial trouble and we should expect corporate recovery policies to continue to be driven by the next days bottom line rather than to provide real solutions and relief for American consumers facing severe financial trouble in 2008.