It's seemed at least potentially true, if not obviously clear, since last year that there well could have been secret distress. By the fall, experienced people on the lending and borrowing sides noted that some amount of distress was being handled privately with a strong helping of embarrassment. No one in business wants to be viewed as being in trouble.

That's not just the borrowers but the lenders. Bad deals add an aroma of decay to a balance sheet, where a state of federal regulator, an investor, or even CPA or accountant might raise a concern or two. One of the ways a lender keeps something looking feasible is by modifying the loan. Changing details, extending the term, all of it can make room to cure any problem — or at least push things off to another day.

When it comes to kicking the can down the road, there seems to have been a spike of it last year in the form of loan modifications, according to CRED iQ. The totals covered 441 loans with total value of $13.6 billion.