One of the things Federal Reserve leaders might do on Thursday is try to stimulate more lending.

But aren't banks already lending? That depends on your perspective, as I explained in this post about the Federal Open Market Committee's options this week. Really bank lending is stable. It's not growing quickly, but neither is it contracting.

Lending in America has increased compared to a year ago, but is still below 2008 levels.

In all, banks held $7.3 trillion in outstanding loans at the end of June, according to the FDIC. That's a lot, but it's still 6.5 percent less than June 2008, right as the country teetered on the precipice of recession.

The credit contraction has mostly been in real estate. Banks in America make most of their loans in three large categories – real estate, commercial and industrial business, and consumer loans. (They lend to farmers as well but that's a much smaller portion of the banking economy than the other three.)

By far the biggest sector is real estate, accounting for as much as 60 percent of the nation's collective bank loan portfolio in 2008. And real estate took the biggest hit in the recession. Lending for homes and office buildings is down 15 percent over the past four years, meaning there's essentially $700 billion less debt-driven real estate activity than four years ago.

That reflects weakness in both housing and commercial real estate. Neither market is in terrible shape, but compared to the boom years of 2005 and 2006, they look tepid.

Here's a chart: