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Welcome to Thursday, Americas. Here’s the latest news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics to help get your day started:

• It was a fairly predictable Federal Reserve interest-rate hold, but Jerome Powell riled things up a bit Wednesday in Washington with comments on inflation that damped rate-cut projections for 2019
  • The Fed’s message of patience gave central bankers in Asia more room ahead of a big week of decisions
• The Bank of England signaled that the market is slightly underpricing the outlook for interest-rate increases over the next three years as long as Brexit goes smoothly
• The Czech central bank raised interest rates to the highest in a decade as a persistently weak koruna adds to inflationary pressure
• The euro area’s manufacturing slump showed tentative improvement in April as Italy’s contraction slowed markedly and French industry stopped shrinking
• The U.S. and China both surprised with strong expansions in the first three months of 2019, yet their imports remained weak, meaning a limited growth cascade onto export powerhouses Germany and South Korea

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