There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Most people attribute this phrase to 19th century British politician and writer Benjamin Disraeli (it was later popularized by our own Mark Twain). But more recently, financial blogger Barry Ritholtz has embraced the motto as his raison d'etre.

Ritholtz writes the popular financial/cultural blog The Big Picture, where, among other things, he loves to take the headline numbers and debunk them. He understands the numbers. By day he's a market strategist and fund manager.

Today he rolls his eyes and examines the latest U.S. Census and Dept. of Housing and Urban Development numbers that show a 4.8% rise in new home sales.

What the mainstream press either overlooks or fails to mention is that pesky little margin of error. For September's numbers, for example, the margin of error renders the data statistically insignificant.

So statistically speaking, there was no rise. Nothing getting better on the housing front.

Damned lies and statistics. Mark Twain would surely be a fan of the Big Picture.

Wow. My eyebrows raised when I read that Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) chose to liquidate two of its bankrupt hedge funds in the Cayman Islands, presumably to limit how much cash their bilked investors could recoup.

Then I puzzled over a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed piece (subscription required) flacked out by Bear Stearns' chief economist David Malpass today. The WSJ is infamous for its right-wing nut job opinions (in contrast to its reputation for solid business reporting). But this one was a real Marie Antoinette-channeling doozy:

"Housing and debt markets are not that big a part of the U.S. economy, or of job creation. It's more likely the economy is sturdy and will grow solidly in coming months, and perhaps years."

Funny, but two-thirds of Americans think we're already in a recession, or will be soon, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll taken last week. But heck, what do I know?

So you really have to hand it to Barry Ritholtz over at The Big Picture, who put it all together and called a spade a spade.

He writes:

"I bet that the idiotic idea for this steaming pile of manure came from way higher up the Bear Stearns food chain. I'll bet he ground his molars down while writing this garbage. Jimmy Cayne must really want to keep his job in the worst way."

That's why I love the Blogosphere. It's where people who do know can tap their chutzpah and tell the world what they think.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) reported today that it missed its February sales growth estimates. Sales at stores open at least one year rose 0.9%, short of its own estimate of 1 to 2% and average analyst estimates of 1.7%.

Wal-Mart blamed the usual suspects -- bad weather and weakness in its home and clothing lines. But it's worth asking if there are deeper problems here. In particular, you have to wonder if the weakness in Wal-Mart's sales growth is an early sign of the subprime mortgage implosion.

Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture -- an excellent stock and economics blog if you haven't seen it -- argues that sales weakness at virtually all of the major box stores is related to much bigger macro-economic problems. In short, the famously indebted American consumer may finally be giving up in the battle to endlessly expand consumption.

In 2005, Americans saw their national savings rate fall into negative territory. This hasn't happened since 1933 -- in the midst of the Great Depression. This is part of a larger pattern of rising economic inequality, in which income gains go to the top 20% of the population while the rest of the population gets increases in debt. And it's not the top 20% that's shopping at Wal-Mart -- it's the people toward the bottom, who are having more and more trouble keeping up. They're also the ones who will suffer the most as $1 trillion in subprime mortgages resets over the next few years. Higher mortgage payments means buying less at Wal-Mart and less money for virtually everything else. It's not a pretty picture, especially for investors in American mass market retailers.