Credit Card Brains

From Bloomberg: Target Writes Off 8.1% of March Credit-Card Loans

Target Corp., the second-largest U.S. discount chain, said it wrote off 8.1 percent of its credit-card loans in March as consumers grappled with job losses and the biggest housing slump in a quarter century.

Defaults during the month totaled $55.5 million, the Minneapolis-based retailer said in a regulatory filing today. The charge-off rate was 6.8 percent in February.

This is pretty ugly - especially the increase in the charge-off rate from 6.8% to 8.1% over one month (this is another company pointing to significant problems in March).

Note: Target didn’t write off 8.1 percent in March - that is the annual charge-off rate.