The emerging economies of the world are beginning to learn what American consumers know all to well: credit cards are a trap.

In places such as Turkey, which until recently eschewed the concept of credit, credit cards have become big business. The number of credit cards in Turkey ballooned to 38 million from fewer than 10,000 thirty years ago, the New York Times reported.

As the American blessing of credit cards became widespread, so did the American curse of debt. Outstanding card debt here ballooned to nearly $18 billion last year, six times the level five years earlier. Default rates spiked and consumer groups protested sky-high interest charges. Newspapers were filled with stories of desperate card holders killing themselves or others. In 2006, a fierce outcry prompted Turkey to pass a law clamping down on credit card marketers. “We did not listen to our ancestors’ proverb,” [Nazim] Kaya [president of Consumers Union] said. “ ‘Stretch your leg only as far as your blanket.’ ” Few American exports have proved as popular as credit cards. In just a generation, they have gone from a totem of Western affluence to an everyday accessory in Brazil, Mexico, India, China, South Korea and elsewhere. More than two-thirds of the world’s 3.67 billion payment cards circulate abroad.

Some Muslim countries still prohibit the use of credit cards. No matter, Mastercard is already working on ways to tap those markets, too, by introducing an Islamic debit card.

Not surprisingly, the international card boom coincides with a slowdown at home. According to U.S. News:

Total credit card debt has increased by over 50 percent since 2000. The average American with a credit file is responsible for $16,635 in debt, excluding mortgages, according to Experian, and the personal savings rate has hovered close to zero for the past several years. High gas and food prices are causing real incomes to fall. Even worse, rising inflation will probably cause the Federal Reserve to start jacking up interest rates once the credit crisis on Wall Street has passed, tightening credit even further. "We’re shedding jobs, it’s much harder to borrow, and what used to be capital gains are now capital losses," says Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics at Moody’s Economy.com. "There’s no source of funding for spending." Because many of us won’t be able to as easily use our homes as ATMs, Hoyt expects to see an upward trend in saving and slower growth in consumer spending, compared with the binge of the past decade.

So, American consumers finally may be confronting their addiction to easy credit, and the card issuers are making up the difference by trying to get new parts of the world hooked.

If that sounds familiar, it should. That’s exactly what the tobacco companies did.