http://redtape.msnbc.com/2008/10/how-credit-card.html
"Delinquencies and defaults are soaring," said Robert Manning, author of the book “Credit Card Nation.”
He said believes some major credit card issuers might not survive the current crisis. "They suspended the financial laws of gravity and put individual households on steroids,” he said. “... Now (banks) don't really know what to do."
One thing they are doing, said Bill Hardekopf, who operates LowCards.com, is finding excuses to lower consumers credit limits.
"What issuers do is tighten up standards of how they analyze risk," he said. The simplest way to reduce risk, he said, is to reduce credit limits. Card issuers never reveal their strategies publicly, so it's never immediately obvious what's happening behind the scenes, Hardekopf said. But he believes efforts have begun to systematically reduce some users' credit limits, akin to a quiet change earlier this year which saw many cardholders' interest rates mysteriously rise.
Asked if Bank of America is using new criteria to lower credit limits, spokeswoman Betty Reiss said, "We adjust credit card limits based on the individual cardholder's risk profile and performance with us." She declined to answer additional questions. Capital One and JP Morgan Chase did not respond to requests for interviews.
The slide from grace is really more like gliding
And I've found the trick is not to stop the sliding
But to find a graceful way of staying slid
