NPR. Waylon, I have a confession to make.
I almost missed the publication of the Beige Book.
Well, Robert, you are in the circle of trust here, so you can tell us what happened.
So I normally have the Beige Book on my calendar.
I set aside the whole day to read the report, brew a pot of tea, I make a whole thing out of it.
But there has been so much economic news lately, tariffs on,
tariffs off, stock market red, stock market green,
that I somehow overlooked that the Federal Reserve had put out its most recent report of economic conditions across the United States.
It's like everything in life, right?
The loud, bright things grab your attention, but the beige,
it's quietly waiting for you when you need it.
You could almost say that it deserves an award.
It's the Beige Awards,
our eight times a year salute to the art and science of telling stories about the economy.
I'm Robert Smith.
And I'm Waylon Wong.
It may not flash red or green, but the beige book abides.
On this edition of the Beige Awards, we find that just as the U.S. is warming into springtime,
an economic freeze is falling over the land.
Bundle up.