• New York Times, Conference Board, Online Media Daily , Wednesday, October 29, 2008 11 AM

A bigger story than the 11% leap in stock prices yesterday, in the eyes of the Times, is the pullback in the credit card market, which it says is affecting even creditworthy consumers.

Let's face it, even the most bullish among us don't expect that yesterday's sudden -- if ethereal -- surge in consumers' net worths will lead to their spreading the wealth around anytime soon (note, too, that consumer confidence was reported at an "all-time low" Tuesday by the Conference Board ). But the consumer credit squeeze is on as limits get maxed out, defaults mount and issuers get skittish.

And lest you think the Times is kidding around, how's this for an ominous lede: "First came the mortgage crisis. Now comes the credit card crisis." In fact, Gary L. Crittenden, CFO at Citigroup, says that "credit card net charge-offs could exceed historical norms" if the job situation doesn't turn around.

Looking deeper into the financial pages, that didn't begin to happen yesterday, by a long stretch. The media industry faces a particularly gruesome future with layoffs announced at Time Inc., Doubleday and Gannett . Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor going to weekly publication in its print edition.

"The paradox of all these announcements is that newspapers and magazines do not have an audience problem," writes media columnist David Carr , "but they do have a consumer problem."

So, too, do brand marketers.

"The fear factor among lenders has deepened just as the crisis makes it harder for some financially stretched consumers to wean themselves from credit cards for even basic needs, like gas and food," writes the Times' Eric Dash. But as the story makes clear, wean is indeed the name of the game .

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