Two more big lenders, or at least buyers of those packaged subprime mortgages, said Tuesday that they stand to take a big hit from the rising tide of defaults in that segment. UBS said it had direct exposure to New Century Financial, reports Reuters.

And back home, analysts say GMAC, the sort of mortgage arm of General Motors may take a billion charge to write off bad loans, reports Bloomberg. If you still have shares in GM, the only good news is that the auto maker got a $14 billion out of its profitable wing before it got hit by the subprime crisis. The company sold 51 percent of the mortgage arm to Cerberus Partners to cash up to restructure its manufacturing operations. And that’s the good news.

But, says Breakingviews, the jury is really still out on whether this is a full-blown crisis. Antony Currie notes the big drop in the stock of big five Wall Street firms over the last 12 months and says its either a big overreaction to the subprime lending exposure or investors are expecting a much tougher time for the investment banks. "Without some pretty spectacular trading losses, the subprime mortgage business is unlikely  to drain the coffers by itself," writes Currie.

On the other hand, if investors are nervous about the easy money that has fueled the private equity boom, then they should be worried. Currie rightly notes that a collapse in that lucrative business would hit the banks hard and certainly scare investors off in a big way.

But for the moment no one seems all that worried. Once the TXU deal gets through, we’ll all be waiting breathlessly to see the next record sale to private equity.