Blatant Lies from the National Association of Realtors

I just had to laugh when I read the news this morning. Home sales were up in December. (But only after the NAR revised November's sales numbers down.)
Here's how the NAR reports this tomfoolery:

Existing-home sales – including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – jumped 6.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.74 million units in December from a downwardly revised pace of 4.45 million units in November, but are 3.5 percent below the 4.91 million-unit pace in December 2007.

Translation: "Home sales dropped 3.5% from a year ago, but we will report that they were up. When home sales drop next month, we will revise December sales down so that we can show an increase in Janruary."

The lesson to be learned is that we need to understand which data to trust and which to discount. Truthful data is essential to investing safely and wisely.

And in other news, Iceland's Government Topples Amid Financial Mess. Iceland has to pay $10's of billions back to European depositors who lost their money in Iceland's banks. Icelanders have discovered that they are not as wealthy as they thought they were.