Ian Shepherdson Tone Quotations

There is a clear change in the tone of the Beige Book, but not all the news is good.

These data leave confidence very close to its cycle high, and completely unaffected by higher interest rates. Together with the rise in home sales also reported today, the data sit very uneasily with Mr. Greenspan's dovish tone last week and again today.

The Fed's Beige Book acknowledges some of the improvement evident in recent economic data, but the tone of the survey could not yet be described as a ringing endorsement of the recovery story,