Credit crunch? What credit crunch?

*lending hit its highest level ever in September 2008 and remained high in October and that overall interbank lending is up 22 percent since the start of the financial crisis, taken to be mid-2007.

*The cost of interbank lending, as measured by the interest rates banks charge each other for lending overnight Fed funds, dropped to its lowest level ever in early November and remains at very low levels.

Marenzi said one of the other measures used by many to gauge interbank lending -- the LIBOR rate -- was a flawed gauge since it was based on daily observations of eight banks, many of which were banks with particularly severe difficulties of their own.

The report argues similarly on consumer credit, which it said was at a record high in September, the latest date for publicly available data.

Local government bond issuance had continued at similar levels to those before the credit crisis, while bank lending for real estate reached a record level in October 2008, it says.

In Europe, the study says there is no evidence of a credit crisis in consumer and commercial lending data up to the end of October, with consumer lending in France and Italy still keeping to trends seen since early 2003 and Germany flatter but for many years and not any more so in recent times.

Bank lending in Britain, tracked from 1999 to October 2008, was at its highest level ever and continued uninterrupted through the credit crisis, the report says.

In Japan, banks began to increase lending activity in late 2005 after a long decline and there has been no sign of a precipitous decline through to October 2008, it said. "Indeed, no decline is visible at all since the credit crisis began."

All of which drove the Celent report to conclude that the U.S. and other governments may be throwing good money after bad for want of a better idea of what is really happening.

"Just like a doctor contemplating an obviously sick and suffering patient, a massive surgical intervention based on a misdiagnosis can only worsen the patient's condition."

(Editing by Toby Chopra)