Big American banks are on a roll. JPMorgan and Citigroup on Friday reported record full-year https://jpmorganchaseco.gcs-web.com/static-files/71d42762-a4d9-435b-9486-b7327e378dca earnings https://www.citigroup.com/citi/news/2022/fourth-quarter-2021-earnings.htm for 2021. Wells Fargo might have too, had regulators not forced it to shrink. Customers and financial markets were exceptionally cooperative in 2021 and will probably continue to be so in 2022. But after a period playing on the same side, the lenders’ chief problem is now each other.

Big American banks are on a roll. JPMorgan and Citigroup on Friday reported record full-year https://jpmorganchaseco.gcs-web.com/static-files/71d42762-a4d9-435b-9486-b7327e378dca earnings https://www.citigroup.com/citi/news/2022/fourth-quarter-2021-earnings.htm for 2021. Wells Fargo might have too, had regulators not forced it to shrink. Customers and financial markets were exceptionally cooperative in 2021 and will probably continue to be so in 2022. But after a period playing on the same side, the lenders’ chief problem is now each other.

It is easy to overplay a good hand, but Crown Resorts has kept its cool. The embattled Australian gambling group bided its time well and is ready to support https://events.miraqle.com/DownloadFile.axd?file=/Report/ComNews/20220113/02475175.pdf a sweetened A$8.9 billion ($6.4 billion) bid from buyout shop Blackstone.

On the southern bank of the Amur river that runs along the Russian border is one of the most affordable property markets in China. Where the average two-bedroom flat in Beijing can cost $1 million, investors can snap one up in the city of Hegang for $10,000. Dependent almost entirely on coal mining, Hegang’s economy has been on the ropes for years. The pandemic appeared to push it over the edge. On December 23, local officials announced the city has frozen hiring and begun fiscal restructuring https://www.caixinglobal.com/2021-12-28/once-a-china-coal-boomtown-hegang-now-cant-afford-to-hire-101823275.html. That may be a first for China, but it’s unlikely the last.

The U.S. job market is still nursing itself back to health two years after the Covid-19 pandemic began. Employers added an average of 537,000 jobs per month in 2021, and the jobless rate fell to 3.9% in December, the Labor Department https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf said on Friday. Those are healthy trends. Yet the economy remains off-kilter.

Moderna may have produced one of the world’s biggest medical products in creating an effective vaccine for Covid-19, but it has also landed itself with a problem a bit like the one facing $1.2 trillion electric-vehicle maker Tesla. Moderna’s market capitalization has rocketed, but only a fraction of its current worth reflects the value of products it actually makes today. The rest is made up of faith in markets yet to exist.

A lot has changed in the U.S. economy one year after protesters stormed the Capitol building. As the election of U.S. President Joe Biden was being validated by Congress, the global pandemic was still raging with a vaccine in the nascent stages, and the American economy was on shaky ground. Now, with business booming, the risks are shifting. While divisions that spurred violence remain, the U.S. dollar is even stronger, helping it keep its grip on its safe-haven status.

Finding China’s answer to Moderna comes with huge health warnings for investors. The $87 billion biotechnology giant’s Covid-19 vaccines have inspired copycats in the People’s Republic, where cities like Xian are scrambling to contain fresh outbreaks. With foreign jabs yet to be approved, Shenzhen-listed Walvax Biotechnology and its smaller partner look promising. Their feverish valuations leave little room for error.

The dictionary defines transition as a “change from one state or condition to another.” That sums up the world as 2022 arrives. Whether it is the move away from an economic system reliant upon hydrocarbons, vanquishing the Covid-19 plague or central banks ending the free-money era, extraordinary shifts are occurring across the planet that will shape markets, corporate finance, politics and economies well beyond the coming year. These are the themes that inform Reuters Breakingviews’ annual book of predictions and prescriptions: “A World in Transition”.

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are their own.)