Happy New Year? Not for credit card companies

By Juan Lagorio - Analysis

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Credit card companies have little to celebrate as many analysts brace for 2009 to be one of the worst years on record for consumer credit.

Losses for the industry could top $70 billion, but it is hard to predict how bad the pain will be.

U.S. consumers have never before been so deeply in debt. There was nearly $1 trillion of credit and charge card debt outstanding as of October, up more than 25 percent since 2003, according to the U.S. Federal Reserve. That is in addition to $10.54 trillion in mortgage debt.

Unemployment, already at 15-year highs, is expected to rise to its highest levels since the early 1980s, when credit cards were not nearly as widespread.

In short, there's more debt than ever and fewer people are able to pay it.

"In many ways, we're in uncharted territory," said John Williams, an analyst at Macquarie Research.

Major credit losses are big trouble for Citigroup Inc, (C.N) Bank of America (BAC.N), and other card issuers such as American Express Co (AXP.N) and Discover Financial Services (DFS.N), which have seen their shares lose up to 80 percent of their value in 2008.

The United States is not standing idly by. Citigroup received $45 billion of taxpayers' money in October and November. Bank of America has received $25 billion. American Express, which became a bank holding company, got approval last week to receive $3.4 billion from the taxpayer-funded Troubled Asset Relief Program.