They’ve already taken a hit on subprime, now major US banks, including troubled Wachovia, could be facing a similar crunch in the construction-lending market.

Part of Wachovia’s problem — apart from its residential-mortgage woes — is the $23.9 billion in outstanding debt it holds in relation to commercial-property projects at the end of the first quarter, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“Teaser rates of just 1% interest, left almost one-in-ten subprime borrowers unable to meet their monthly mortgage bills,” says Adrian Ash in The Daily Reckoning UK. “So the profits assumed by ‘resetting’ those rates to 7% and above two years down the line were never going to show up.

“As in not ever. Any bank day-dreaming otherwise deserves euthanasia, let alone bankruptcy.

What they’re getting instead, however, is a fresh dose of money from the Fed. The US central bank is actively creating a market in mortgage bonds, accepting these illiquid assets as collateral against loans of highly liquid US Treasury bonds.

Will the money thus released to the banks find its way back into US house prices? Whatever happens on your street in 2008, subprime lending as a financial product is dead – if not for good, then at least for now. Issuance of residential mortgage-backed bonds collapsed by 95% during the first three months of this year, according to data from SIFMA, the securities association. The futures market expects a further 25% drop in US house prices, notes Janet Yellen of the Fed, based off the price for Case-Shiller index contracts.