Or was it Richard Milhous Lenin?
Well, here proof that price controls don't work:
Nixon’s wage and price controls included a freeze on wages, prices, rents, and extended to calling for a freeze of corporate dividends. He also announced the creation of a "Cost of Living Council," that would be run by Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Dick Cheney. Although Nixon’s August 1971 announcement was for a 90-day price freeze, the program went through four separate phases that lasted ten time that long, until April 1974. An iatrogenic disease is one introduced by the treatment of a physician. If rising prices were the ailment from which the economy suffered, Nixon’s prescription of wage and price controls proved to be bad medicine with its own iatrogenic disease. Its most debilitating symptom? Shortages.
Costs of some raw materials such as cotton were allowed to rise, but the costs of finished products made of those materials were not. So the finished goods were not made. Store shelves emptied. Farmers discovered it cost more to raise poultry than they could recoup selling it at the controlled prices. Chickens were drowned before they consumed more costly feed. The same thing happened with ranchers and feedlots that would lose money bringing cattle to market at the controlled prices. There were low prices for beef posted in the supermarkets, but the meat counters were empty. Because Nixon was afraid of political reaction to the creation of swarms of officers and price inspectors crawling under the tables and peering from behind curtains at every American business transaction, he styled the mandatory price controls as "voluntary." But they were only voluntary in the sense that paying income taxes is "voluntary." And he held the threat of IRS audits over businesses that failed to comply.
Another chapter from the bitter legacy of the Central Bank.
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