For the last several months the markets have been anticipating a wave of defaults by commercial real estate borrowers and the likely effect those defaults would have on bank balance sheets and on commercial mortgage-backed securities. With this expected wave in mind, lenders have been engaged in various attempts to work with borrowers in an effort to ameliorate the adverse effect of having to carry these loans as criticized or non-performing loans. Some observers caustically have called this a “pray and delay” strategy, while more charitable commentators refer to this as merely an “amend and extend” program.