``A new financial meltdown'' may loom beyond the current crisis, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said yesterday, calling for federal action against ``abusive credit card practices.''

In a letter to colleagues who are leading the efforts to write bailout legislation for the financial system, Whitehouse explained the potential credit card meltdown this way:

``As families suffer in this economy, credit cards raise rates and fees to abusive and usurious levels on them, driving them into deeper trouble in a vicious cycle. Each issuing bank must chase the others down the road of these bad practices in order to stay competitive, so no one has an incentive to back off on their own.''

Whitehouse concluded that ``government has to break the cycle.'' He prescribed ``meaningful credit card reform.''

Whitehouse also recapped some of the provisions that Democratic leaders seek in return for their support of the administration's proposal to bail out the financial system. He said, for example, that the bailout should help ``average Americans caught in this crisis,'' as well as financial institutions.