Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Thursday, April 29th, and this is your

FT News Briefing.

The Federal Reserve painted a rosy picture of the U.S. economic recovery. The EU says it's

keeping a close watch on recovery spending, and a global health expert says patent waivers

might not be enough to boost the number of vaccines in poorer countries. Plus, Credit

Suisse is suffering after making some massively bad bets. In a way, Credit Suisse is the

new Deutsche Bank, unable to keep itself out of any scandal, and it comes down to basic

things like leadership and culture and risk appetite. We'll take a look at how the bank

might make a comeback. I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell yesterday painted a brighter picture of the U.S. economic

recovery, and showed no sign the U.S. Central Bank would change monetary policy anytime

soon.

Investors had been speculating whether the Fed would budge after a string of positive economic

reports. Here's the FT's U.S. Capitol Markets correspondent, Colby Smith.

Powell was really explicit on Wednesday that we're not yet at this point, and I think

Markets were somewhat relieved. He didn't kind of go down this path of talking about

not only how strong the economy is, but also, you know, the steps to eventually withdrawing

that support. So there was a bit of relief there across equities and the treasury market

to those comments.

So Colby, last night, President Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union address. He talked

about another big spending plan, the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan that would expand

the social safety net in the U.S. It comes after two other multi-trillion dollar spending

...