Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Antibiotics were once practically magical.

A shot or a pill and bacterial infections were gone.

But they proved almost too easy.

Use them too much and they work less and less.

And the costs of that are becoming deadly clear in South Asia.

And by now, everyone knows that eating less meat would mean a lot fewer carbon emissions.

As lots of people have gone vegan for January, our data journalists looked at another striking gain that veganism would bring.

Huge tracts of habitable land.

But first... America's economy showed some stunning growth last year.

Numbers released yesterday showed that GDP grew by 5.7% in 2021, the highest since 1984. But that measure is looking back.

2022 is going to be a very different year. America's central bank is making louder and louder

noises about cooling down that growth, raising interest rates and turning down the taps of money

it's been

pouring into the economy. So the view ahead isn't nearly as clear or as rosy. GDP forecasts are

getting hurriedly marked down. All that is making investors uncertain, and you can tell. America's

big stock market indices have been bouncing all over the place each day,

but all told, they're on a steep slide so far this year.

And there you have it, the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange,

to end a wild first day of trading this week.

...