The Wages of Price Controls

I ran into Publius Pundit's article while parusing Babalu Blog and found this interesting post. Apparently Uncle Hugo's economic policies are causing shortages of coffee, meat, and electricity: Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez froze telephone and electricity rates and restricted foreign currency trading after a 2002-03 strike cut oil production and cost the nation's economy $11 billion. Frozen rates have hurt the profitability of the country's power companies. Kids, this is what happens when you try to substitute the market with a political ideology. Let's not try this at home, shall we?