I know I sound like a broken record, but the news is what it is; U.S. consumers have cut their credit debt for a ninth straight month according to the Federal Reserve.

Credit debt fell by $3.51 billion, or 1.7 percent at an annual rate, to $2.48 trillion. Borrowing dropped by $8.77 billion in September. However the decline in debt last month was actually less than what was forecast.

The factors behind this are the same, with a combination of tighter lending by banks and belt-tightening by families. With record unemployment, everyone is uneasy about debt. This is a true “neither a borrower nor lender be” moment in our history.

But as we pare down our debt, delinquencies are still high. JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest U.S. card lender, as well as Capital One and  Discover posted October data that included their highest delinquency rates for 2009.

It’s good to see that we continue our spendthrift ways, but in a strange way this is also good news in the sense that we need increased spending to help get the economy back on track, so the fact that we didn’t cut debt as much as expected is a welcome development on a macro level.

So it will be interesting to see how the holidays affect this pattern and whether or not the streak will be broken. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Americans can’t go cold turkey on spending. We are a consumer culture and even though we’ve been shocked and awed by the speed and scale of the current financial crisis, the lure of shiny new things will take hold again soon enough.