Credit Card Marketing Activity Increases

In what can only be seen as a good sign for the economy as a whole, it was recently reported that credit card marketing activity has increased.

A Chicago-based company that tracks marketing trends called Mintel Compermedia recently reported that credit card mail volume for the month of October rose for the first time in the year 2009.

Their study revealed that 180 million credit card solicitation pieces were mailed to consumers throughout the United States in the month of October.

When compared to the 134 million pieces sent in October you can see that it is a rather marked increase.

It is in fact the first increase month over month for the entire year.

While we certainly are not celebrating the fact that we will be receiving more junk mail, we are definitely pleased to see that the credit card issuers feel as though they are in a strong enough position to aggressively increase their advertisements.

In fact, Bank of America recently announced that it repaid in full the $45 billion taxpayer subsidized bailout that they received from the federal government.

There is no question that these are positive signs for the economy as a whole.

With that said however, we really won’t see a substantial turnaround until the unemployment rate begins to decline.

The issuance of credit is directly correlated to the unemployment rate. When times are good and unemployment is low, credit flows rather freely.

The flip side of that of course is what we have been seeing over the past couple of years. Credit tightens up substantially when unemployment levels rise.

The default rates rise rather quickly as well. In fact, they are now at a record high level. It’s a very simple formula really, if people don’t have jobs they can’t pay their bills.

So we are not out of the woods yet by any means but several signs point to the economy starting to look a little bit better slowly but surely.

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