Economics: As long as there are not leveraged chains of interlinked borrowing, individual acts of "pretend and extend" have little if any implications for anyone other than the borrower, the lender, and the immediate owners and creditors of the lender. The rest of the business of financing and building can continue with deals struck with only an occasional side-eye and shudder glance at postponed workouts. Yes, regulators and investors need to watch those doing the rollovers like hawks. But as long as that process is underway, there is little reason to make accelerating workouts a big priority. But is that process underway?;

Gillian Tett: It’s time to be honest about America’s commercial real estate hangover: ‘“pretend and extend”… need[s] to end…. What is striking is… how little pain has been crystallised so far…. Lenders are rolling over bad loans…. The overall banking system is fairly well capitalised…. The Fed has scrambled to create systems to contain contagion.… The problem is that as long as these “pretend and extend” tactics are playing out, uncertainty will haunt the property sector, threatening to undermine American growth… <ft.com/content/12e0c608…>