Employees at a fast-food restaurant in Sacramento, California, feeling exasperated over working in stifling heat for low wages, demanded more pay and a new air conditioner and got both.
Customer orders poured in to an Italian auto supplier, which struggled to get hold of enough supplies of everything from plastic to microchips to meet the demand.
A water shortage in Taiwan magnified a worldwide scarcity of computer chips, so vital to auto and electronics production.
The global economy had not experienced anything like this for decades. Maybe ever. After years in which ultra-low inflation had become a fixture of economies across