More Exciting Than it Sounds: The Beige Book

by Raymond James, 9/2/25

Don’t let all the math fool you. At its heart, the economy is a social creation, driven by both our higher-order functions of risk and reward and the ancient part of our brain that causes flop sweat. So when you want to get a sense of how things are going, you should look at the numbers, but there can also be value in asking people about the view out their window. The Federal Reserve thinks so.

For most, a chatty cabbie or a “How’s business?” over scotch rocks at the sky lounge might net some novel real-world economic insight, but the Fed takes the idea a bit further. Eight times a year, each of the 12 regional banks that comprise the Federal Reserve System asks a bunch of people about how their economy has changed since the last report. These responses are then analyzed, plucked for interesting nuggets and published in brief form.

It’s not an opinion poll or a scientific survey, and it’s not vox populi. Instead, it’s the Beige Book.

Each bank sets its own Beige Book reporting priorities, though prices, jobs and real estate are common themes. The Kansas City Fed, for example, covers nine topics, including community conditions, community and regional banking and agriculture.

Nicknamed for the color of its cover, the Beige Book is known formally as the “Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions,” a title used only in articles explaining the Beige Book. It was the “Redbook” when it was created in 1970 on account of its red cover but was changed to beige in 1983 when it was first made available to the public. Red was seen as too exciting. Fed leaders feared people would overestimate the report’s importance if it were a bolder hue.

Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members presumably add the Beige Book to the slurry of economic information they ingest before setting the nation’s monetary policy. The FOMC, among its other important duties, sets interest rate targets.