Today, we're honored to accept a Best in Peer-to-Peer Lending award from Wisebread, among the blogosphere's leading personal finance and frugality publications! Check it out, as along with announcing awards across a range of categories they've also released a new book, 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget wherein Lending Club and other winners are featured:

As recently reported by indexcreditcards.com, so far 2009 has shown that credit card companies are markedly on the rise across all consumer sectors, a trend that all borrowers should be aware of. Check out these fresh weekly stats as gathered via a survey of several major banks including American Express, Capital One, Wells Fargo and others:

• Average consumer credit card rate, overall market: 14.17%
• Average credit card rate, non-reward consumer cards: 12.80%
• Average reward credit card rate: 14.76%
• Average student credit card rate: 14.15%
• Average business credit card rate (non-reward): 11.77%
• Average business reward credit card rate: 12.84%

It’s important to note that these are taking effect across the credit spectrum, as the data also reflects changes in

“the very lowest listed rates, those reserved for customers with the very best credit. This week those averages were also up, to 11.21% for the market as a whole (previously 10.84%), with a 9.77% average for non-reward cards (previously 9.29%) and a 11.83% average for consumer cards with rewards (previously 11.50%).”

Clearly, there’s never been a better time for those with good credit to explore alternative ways to borrow money.

Today, we're excited to receive a nod from Harvard Business Review, which has highlighted social lending as a Breakthrough idea for 2009.

"Whenever people come together to create a pool of capital, the potential for wealth creation blossoms. ...the internet and social networks enable peer-to-peer interaction on an unprecedented scale." - John Sviokla

Hit up the full read at HarvardBusiness.org.

Yesterday on ABC, Renaud was interviewed by Jackie Hyland on "Money Matters". To check out the discussion of how social lending can be part of solving the current economic crisis, watch the video here.

For some of the latest details on Lending Club including on the reactivated growth we’ve seen since reopening our platform last week (offering Notes by Prospectus), and thoughts on how our new secondary market now empowers people with even more ways to do things that previously only banks and other corporate financial entities could do, check out recent discussions Renaud’s had with Yahoo! Finance, The Wall Street Journal, NuWire Investor and Fox Business.