The Beigie Awards: Why banks are going on a "loan diet"

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Every time a new Beige Book report rolls around, we honor the regional Federal Reserve bank with the best anecdote with our prestigious Beigie Award. The winner of the October 2023 Beigie highlighted an interesting shift in the behavior of some big banks. Today, we talk to our winner all about "loan diets."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:12.0	I am so excited, Adrian.
0:14.6	The Paint Company Benjamin Moore has just announced their color of the year for 2024.
0:20.2	Please let it be beige.
0:21.2	Let it be beige.
0:22.2	Right?
0:23.2	But sadly, it is not.
0:24.7	If you're a paint company, you don't make billions of dollars by pushing beige.
0:28.6	You need some fancy, fancy color name for the accent wall in your living room.
0:32.9	Yeah, I guess.
0:35.0	So what is it this year?
0:36.3	The color is blue, nova, apparently inspired by outer space or something.
0:41.2	Here, take a look.
0:42.4	Okay, it's not bad.
0:44.0	It kind of looks like a squashed smurf.
0:47.4	Yeah, that's right.
0:49.2	That's right.
0:50.2	I do actually see some branding potential here.
0:53.1	Like maybe the Federal Reserve could do a similar thing instead of publishing an obscure
0:57.2	government report they called the beige book eight times a year.
1:00.9	They could instead put out something called the Wellfleet Sand colored book or the green
1:06.6	span khaki book.
	...

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