The Fed’s beige book is one of the less useful economic reports: it looks backward at what has been going on around the country and the qualitative information can be hard to compare to other times.

It’s quite fun to pick out some snippets of the detail, though. The sense this time is that economic conditions are, well, a bit beige.

Boston

The specific sales reports range from “extraordinary demand” at a semiconductor firm to less-than-anticipated demand at two firms making life science equipment and medical devices. In particular, the semiconductor firm reports sales in the second quarter were 17 percent above their pre-recession peak.

A New Hampshire contact says that some types of homes are still selling well, notably those in convenient locations near major highways. Meanwhile, prices in rural New Hampshire are “plummeting.”

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The Federal Reserve’s “Beige Book”, an aggregation of anecdotal evidence of economic activity in the 12 districts, showed ten of them reporting an improvements, compared with eight in the last report.

But, no big surprise, the improvements are typically modest. Holiday spending was up in 2009, but still well below 2007 levels. Labour markets were still “generally weak,” though some hiring was reporting in a few districts. “Modest” wage increases were seen in only a few districts.

Among the interesting items: Read more

The beige book is a tad softer than expected, writes Krishna Guha of the Financial Times Read more