The Federal Reserve extended by three to six months an emergency program aimed at restarting credit markets, a move that may cushion the commercial real estate industry from rising defaults and falling prices, Bloomberg reported. The Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), with a capacity of as much as $1 trillion, will expire June 30, 2010, for newly issued commercial-mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), instead of Dec. 31, the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department said today in a statement. For other asset-backed securities and CMBS sold before Jan. 1, the plan was extended three months to March 31, 2010. Though financial-market conditions “have improved considerably in recent months,” the markets for both types of securities “are still impaired and seem likely to remain so for some time,” the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department said. The central bank said it doesn’t intend to make other types of collateral eligible for the program, though it did no rule out an expansion. It also left the door open to prolonging the program beyond the new expiration dates, saying it “will consider in the future whether unusual and exigent circumstances warrant a further extension.” The Federal Reserve began TALF in March to restart the market for securities backed by auto, credit-card and education loans. In June, the program was expanded to cover as much as $100 billion in loans to support commercial-mortgage-backed securities. As of Aug. 12, the loans under the program totaled $29.6 billion. The central bank gave the TALF an initial capacity of $200 billion, backed by $20 billion of funds from the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program to shield the Federal Reserve from losses.