Your morning briefing. All the news you need to start your day.

On today's podcast:

(1) President Donald Trump offered a strident defense of his administration and economic record, declaring the nation is “bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before” in a State of the Union address that contained few new policy announcements.

(2) HSBC reported better-than-estimated earnings for 2025 as Europe’s largest bank closed out a year in which its market value broke through £200 billion ($270 billion) for the first time in its history.

(3) A few weeks ago, analysts at UBS Group AG laid out a worst-case scenario for defaults in the private credit sector. Their outlook is even more grim now.

(4) Money manager Danny Moses, immortalized in The Big Short, said private credit and private equity firms’ push into retail products reminds him of the years preceding the subprime mortgage crisis.

(5) European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc will deliver on its €90 billion ($106 billion) loan package to Ukraine “one way or another” as the war-battered nation is set to run out of funds in a matter of weeks.

(6) Lawyers acting for Peter Mandelson, the former UK ambassador to Washington who was linked to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, said his arrest at home was prompted by a “baseless” suggestion that he was about to flee the country.

(7) Spain is the euro zone’s fastest-growing major economy since 2022, but construction hasn't kept up and now its housing crisis is reaching a boiling point.

Podcast Conversation: MAGA Meets Europe: Trump’s Envoys Rip Up Diplomatic Playbook