Boats, bikes and the Beigies

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Beigies are back and headed down south! From boats and bikes to pigs and cows, you could call this one a wild ride.

Eight times a year, the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks come together to share anecdotes from businesses and other industry experts in their respective parts of the country.

These stories are published in the "Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions by Federal Reserve District," more commonly known as the Beige Book.

We pick our favorite anecdotes and crown a winner!

Check out the previous Beigies winner here and click to listen to our recent story on greedflation.

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:05.0	Darian, I have some bad news about the computers taking over our jobs.
0:17.2	Like our jobs?
0:18.2	Indicator hosts.
0:19.2	How would that be possible?
0:21.2	I know.
0:22.2	I know.
0:23.2	We have such a unique skill set.
0:24.2	For instance, every six weeks or so, I pour through an obscure government report known
0:29.6	as the beige book, maybe you've heard of it.
0:31.8	I look for great stories, it takes me a couple of hours.
0:35.1	But this month, I noticed that a computer was doing the whole thing a lot faster.
0:39.8	And better looks like you've sent me this graph that breaks down the beige book by keywords
0:44.2	and charts that over the last three years.
0:46.6	I know it says here, mentions of wages in the beige book have dropped over the last
0:51.4	year.
0:52.4	And concerns about credit lending are still very high.
0:55.4	It's amazing.
0:56.4	I mean, a computer can consume data and analyze it more efficiently.
1:01.4	But would it ever think to take all that economic data, turn it into a fake awards show, and then
1:06.3	persist in the joke for years and years and years?
1:10.7	Thank you so much, Darian.
	...

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