Is Somebody Monkeying Around?

Twice in the last 2 days and increasingly observed recently … for example this morning the New Homes Report is reported something like this … New Home sales rose surprisingly 4% over last month when they were expected to drop 2 % although the figures from the previous month were adjusted lower 7% … does anyone else find this at least weird if not suspicious.  If you don’t monkey with the previous month’s data, the current month will be pretty much inline with expectations.  But with the radical adjustments to the previous month, the current month looks much better than expected and the lemmings buy the market with gusto.  If this is an intentional manipulation of the data, then it has an additional advantage.  The previous month would have looked WAY worse at the time if the Real figures had been reported.  Why bother doing that, when we can hold the bad news in our pocket, look like we are being dedicated to accuracy LATER and have a way of deflecting the bad news in the present at the same time.  Aren’t we supposed to be going for Win-Win as much as possible?  Oh, my bad, I forgot; we are in an illusions and what does it matter if some one appears to be distorting their version of it.

This is what the statement in the report itself actually looked like, but it is NOT what is reported in the financial press:

Sales of new one-family houses in February 2009 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 337,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  This is 4.7 percent (±18.3%)* above the revised January rate of 322,000, but is 41.1 percent (±7.9%) below the February 2008 estimate of 572,000.

Note the fabulous standard deviation  4.7%^ (+/- 18.3%)

The “bottom line” is probably pretty close to correct, i.e. 250,000 less new home sales this year than last.  So, what is not a pretty picture is monkeyed around with until it looks, well, better than expected, which still does not equal anything like good.  The buying based on this begins the moment a better than expected number is seen … Mr. Market did sell it off at the expense of the idiots over the next 30 minutes.  But don’t be surprised if the evening news is still trying to find this as proof that the recession is over.

Oh, it’s actually better (or worse) than this when you read the US govt report.  It turns out they are now making adjustments which result from them having miscounted houses for years … hmmm … if you can’t count houses, better not try fingers.