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While many Americans have piled up thousands of dollars’ worth of credit card debt in the months since the recession began, there is help on the way thanks to the new financial reform bill.

The bill, which passed the Senate 60-39, will add new help for Americans in the form of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will operate as part of the Federal Reserve System. The new body will help to govern the way banks can lend to consumers, and will have the unprecedented ability to rule on rates and fees that it deems harmful.

"From now on, every American will be empowered with the clear and concise information you need to make financial decisions that are best for you," said President Barack Obama, who is expected to sign the bill before July 24. "It will reinforce the new credit card law we passed banning unfair rate hikes, and ensure that folks aren’t unwittingly caught by overdraft fees when they sign up for a checking account."

In addition to credit card lending, the new bureau will have oversight of several other types of loans, including mortgages.

Most consumers know that they have a credit score, and many are aware of what it actually is. However, a lot of people probably don’t know exactly what that number means.

As more consumers’ credit scores sink below 650, the basic cut-off rate between prime and subprime borrowers, it’s important that they know the consequences of their lower score. According to a new report from consumer financial advice website Mint.com, consumers with a score under 650 are likely to be denied for credit or, worse, given loans with seriously unfavorable rates and terms.

Because many Americans may have ugly looking credit reports, it should also be noted that those negatives will stay on the report between seven and 10 years. However, bad marks do eventually have to be removed from it, and as negatives age, they matter less to lenders, meaning that credit scores can improve over time all by themselves.

However, there are steps consumers can take to improve their credit scores, including making their payments on time – which accounts for 35 percent of a score by itself – and paying more than the minimum on their credit card bills.

Many credit card companies across the country have seen an increase in the rate at which they’ve written off delinquent credit card debt as irretrievable in recent months. But one company that issues cards for major retail chains actually reported a decrease in its charge off rate.

Alliance Data Systems, which controls credit card and loyalty rewards programs for chains like Ann Taylor, Victoria’s Secret and Pottery Barn, said that the rate at which it wrote off credit card debt as uncollectable declined in the second quarter of the year to 9 percent. That rate was at 9.8 percent for the same period of last year, and 9.4 percent for the first quarter of 2010.

Like most major lenders, Alliance also reported a drop in delinquencies. Payments that were 30 days behind or more dropped from 5.9 percent through June of 2009 to 5.4 percent for the same period this year.

However, those lenders have reported lower delinquency because they have written off those debts, whereas Alliance has managed to lower both delinquency and charge off rates.

Sales at retail and food service businesses declined slightly in June, thanks to a drop in consumer spending.

According to the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, retail and food services had sales of $360.2 billion, a decrease of 0.5 percent – though that number is within the margin of error – from May. The figure, however, is a 4.8 percent increase from the same month last year.

The Census Bureau said that retail and food services increased significantly for the quarter, despite the June losses. Sales were 6.8 percent higher than they were in the same quarter of last year.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, most economists were not surprised by the losses in sales. Consumer spending declined, they said, because of a combination of volatility in the stock market and the continued elevated levels of unemployment.

One economist said that the underlying numbers showed this decline was a long time coming because "household balance sheets [are] still over-leveraged," and that’s the largest determining factor in consumer spending growth.

Many consumers that have been considering debt consolidation might have found it difficult to get a loan from traditional banks thanks to the tighter lending restrictions forced by the economic downturn.

Butthere is a new trend that has helped many Americans get the money they’re looking for called peer-to-peer lending. According to CBS News, the movement is taking hold because consumers now recognize it as a cheaper alternative to borrowing from banks for a number of reasons. While peer-to-peer lending sites do take into account credit score, credit history, income and employment situation, they have less stringent restrictions for who they will lend to, and lower rates as well.

While there are fees involved with using these sites, those seeking a loan for debt consolidation should be aware that they are typically lower than those credit card companies charge for balance transfers, the report said. There’s also no fee for paying back the loan early.

According to the consumer advice website Bankrate.com, debt consolidation loans are typically difficult to pay off when they are issued through banks. Peer-to-peer lending might alleviate some of those troubles for borrowers.

Millions across the country have faced the possibility of having to declare bankruptcy. For increasing numbers New Jersey residents, that possibility is becoming reality.

According to a report in the Times of Trenton, the number of bankruptcy filings in the state increased considerably – by 27 percent – in the 12-month period ending in May from the previous year. Those numbers hit their peak in March, when 4,166 state residents filed for bankruptcy. That was the highest monthly total since the federal bankruptcy laws were changed four years ago.

Exacerbating the problem is that many of these filings have been by individuals, and that number is climbing all the time. Salaries have stayed flat, and many homeowners have lost their jobs, which has wiped out their savings as their income dried up. That leads to more credit card debt, making their financial situation worse every month.

Nationwide, consumer bankruptcies increased steadily in the first six months of the year, climbing 14 percent over filings in the same period last year. But according to the American Bankruptcy Institute, there have been three months of slight decline in the number of bankruptcy cases.

More consumers are seeing their credit scores drop off this year.

According to a report from the AP, which cited new statistics provided by FICO, 25.5 percent of Americans – about 43.4 million – have a credit score below 600, meaning lenders view them as a risk, leaving them unable to qualify for credit cards, auto loans and mortgages. Over the last two years, the number of people in the lowest credit score category increased by about 2.4 million.

The report also said that this trend is likely to get worse before it gets better due to millions of unemployed Americans going longer without full-time work. Millions more face foreclosure, which can lower a credit score by 150 points. An ugly credit report takes considerably longer to repair than it does to ruin.

A new report from Fox Business said that new changes in lending laws are designed to help consumers out a bit, but that they will also force lenders to tighten their restrictions even more, locking out larger numbers of Americans.

Thanks to worries over the state of the economy, even holiday discounts weren’t enough to push consumer spending forward significantly.

According to a report from Marketwatch, a number of retailers saw June sales push ahead slightly as consumers shopped both for the holiday discounts and as a result of rising temperatures nationwide, while others flagged unexpectedly. Department stores led the way, with retailers like J.C. Penney, Macy’s and Nordstrom posting better-than-anticipated sales numbers, though Kohl’s fell short.

Discount retailers, on the other hand, saw sales fall short of expert forecasts, Marketwatch said. Target’s sales rose, as did those for Costco and BJ’s Wholesale, but those increases were less than they expected.

Marketwatch said that these results mean retailers will have to increase their promotions for the back-to-school season, which is the second-largest sales period after the holiday season.

A report in the financial times said that June was an important month because it comes in the middle of the quarter and numbers from it will determine whether retailers will have to significantly discount inventory to offload it before the end of July.

All the latest numbers make it look like a success story. Credit card debt and delinquencies have declined in recent months, and experts hail these numbers as a sign that Americans are pulling themselves out of financial trouble.

But a new report in the Wall Street Journal says a deeper look tells the opposite story. The real reason for these sharp declines over the past few months, despite rates of joblessness remaining rather high, is that credit card companies are simply writing off long-delinquent debt as money they will never collect.

The evidence, the Journal says, is found in the quarterly numbers from the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which show that despite $19.5 billion in debt reduced in the first three months of the year, $18.7 billion of that – almost 96 percent – was actually written off as being irretrievable.

A Forbes report on the drop in debt and delinquency said that unemployment and delinquency figures are usually closely connected, but that trend didn’t hold last month as delinquencies dropped while joblessness held steady.