Today, new home sales were reported down 10.5%. Which seems not inconsistent with the anecdotal data flowing in. Yesterday, existing home sales were reported (by the NAR, National Association of Realtors) to be up 5.2%. Somewhere, there is a large inconsistency. Other bloggers - Mish, Russwinter have analyzed the NAR numbers in detail to show how unlikely they are (to be true, that is).

The NAR, usually in the form of David Lereah, its chief economist, has repeatedly shown that it will say anything in pursuit of boosting the real estate market and the perceived interests of its members.

Fidelity Investments announced that a laptop belonging to one of its employees had been stolen, and that the laptop contained personal details, including names, addresses, birthdates, SSNs and account details for about 196,000 current and past Hewlett-Packard employees. Including my wife.

While (irresponsibly) understating the risk, Fidelity’s response was to send out a letter with a promo code for Equifax’s credit monitoring service (which Equifax would no doubt have gladly given for free as a marketing program). The letter basically said, well, we screwed up, but it is your problem. Not even any specifics about how they were going to prevent a recurrence.

We now have to monitor our credit and are at major risk for having my wife’s identity stolen by, say, a child pornographer. Too bad, sez Fido. Could be nothing bad will happen, sez Fido. Yeah right.

This kind of occurrence indicates a total failure of any internal controls over data that may exist. They have no business lugging personal data around on laptops that will be stolen, sooner or later. Arrogance and indifference to their customers. I’m out of there.

RealtyTracâ„¢ (www.realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released its February 2006 Monthly U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows 117,259 properties nationwide entered some stage of foreclosure in February, a 13 percent increase from the previous month and a 68 percent increase from February 2005. The report shows a February national foreclosure rate of one new foreclosure for every 986 U.S. households.

Needless to say, this is not a good sign for the property market. If you haven’t sold yet, you had better hurry. You have missed the peak, most likely, but there is still demand out there.

Americans don’t save. Are you one of the few savers? You could be. Stop spending money on designer drinks at Starbucks for a start. The one near us has longer lines than I can ever remember. All these folks willing to plunk down an hour’s worth of work for a coffee and a pastry mid morning and a blended drink in the afternoon. Amazing!

Even scarier - the moms driving up in their urban assault vehicles to buy coffee drinks and pastries for their little kids. What ever happened to milk and cookies? Or apples?

Several smart affluent lady friends say they need help to manage their money - they don’t have time, they don’t have the knowledge (even the one with the MBA) and/or they “trust” their financial advisor. I understand the lack of self confidence for taking full responsibility for your financial affairs, but it just isn’t that difficult or time consuming to do a reasonably good job on your own. Look at all the guys who do this for a living - not a rocket scientist in the bunch.