A prospective home buyer checks out the Southern Nevada housing market in 2010.

Hi. You probably don’t remember me talking about the state economic crisis last week because you were too engrossed in accurately squirting your tiny ration of mustard onto your shoeleather sandwich while simultaneously fending off an attack of unemployed rapacious outland mutoids. Well, I’m actually glad you weren’t listening, because now the news that things are only gonna get powerfully worse will only depress you half as much as if, say, you absolutely, positively weren’t able to resist the urge to CLICK HERE or HERE).

Basically, the story in the International Herald Tribune today says the subprime crisis was just the tip of the terrorberg, and that the next wave of home foreclosures won’t be due to those thousand species of zany mortgages dreamed up by lenders and their very hot crack pipes. Nope. Nudged by high unemployment, the next big wave will see banks foreclosing on your typical all-American prime mortgage held by sane people with good credit as the subprime crisis levels out.

Read this snip while I make tea by crying on fistfuls of crumpled “Payment Past Due” notices:

Defaults are likely to accelerate because many homeowners’ monthly payments are rising rapidly. The higher bills come as home prices continue to decline and banks are tightening their lending standards, making it harder for people to refinance loans or sell their homes. Of particular concern are alt-A loans, many of which were made to people with good credit scores without proof of their income or assets.

This can’t spell good things for the economy of Nevada, whose state bird is now a pair of bloody hands hammering in futile rage at a “For Sale” sign jammed into the eye of the American Dream. So, the next time you read one of those R-J stories in which Marty McAnalyst the Real Estate Boosterhead says an uptick is just around the corner, you know, big-ass grain of salt and all that.