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Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) said this week that it wrote off 8.1% of its internal credit card loans in March. In case you haven't heard, consumers are grappling with record gas prices, rising food prices and the worst housing market in 25 years. As such, consumers are defaulting on more than just mortgage debt from short-sighted loans.

The second-largest discount retailer in the U.S. said that defaults from its own consumer credit line totaled $55.5 million for the month of March alone. In February, Target's annualized credit card balance write-off amount stood at 6.8%, which climbed to 8.1% in March. It's been suggested that Target take a long, hard look at its credit card operations, and the subject comes up every quarterly conference call when analysts continue to scratch their heads on why Target has such visibility to the credit market -- and the deterioration of it throughout 2008.

Target appears to also be in talks with JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) to sell about half of its own credit card operations for about $4 billion, but there is nothing final yet. target also indicated that it had been talking with another potential suitor. In all, Target's credit card operations are worth about $8.3 billion -- a chunk the retailer would better use to build new stores and amplify share buybacks beyond past levels. However, revenue from the retailer's credit card operations is nothing to sneeze at either. For example, the retailer saw profit of $532 million just from its credit card operations along in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Target writes off 8.1% of its annualized credit card debt in March originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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