The economic hits keep coming as Biden's promised return to normal eludes America
CNN
Empty baby formula shelves. Feared summer power blackouts. Plunging stocks. Predictions of widespread $6-a-gallon gasoline. Recession clouds. Coming food shortages. Soaring grocery prices. And the refusal of a pandemic to ease its grip.
This current reality, mixed with forecasts of worse to come, is hardly the normality Americans craved, and that President Joe Biden promised last year when he said, shortly after taking office, that "America is coming back."
Yet there is a growing sense of crises piling on crises as the shockwaves of a period of unusual global turmoil -- including a once-in-a-century pandemic and the worst war in Europe since 1945 -- burrow into the fabric of daily life.
Hours after President Joe Biden touted its success during his commencement speech at West Point last Saturday, White House staffers learned that the temporary pier the military had just constructed into Gaza was falling apart. Four Army vessels had been beached, two in Gaza and two along the coast of Israel.