{"id":6835,"date":"2026-05-21T10:16:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T10:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/?p=6835"},"modified":"2026-05-21T10:16:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T10:16:16","slug":"europe-is-considering-price-caps-to-control-inflation-ceos-are-shaking-their-heads-in-despair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/?p=6835","title":{"rendered":"Europe is\u00a0considering\u00a0price caps to control inflation.\u00a0CEOs\u00a0are\u00a0shaking\u00a0their heads in despair\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When the supply of toilet paper started running\u00a0out\u00a0back in 2013, the Venezuelan authorities\u00a0came up with\u00a0a novel explanation.\u00a0\u201c95% of people eat three or more meals a day,\u201d the president of the National Statistics Institute, Elias Eljuri, said\u00a0at the time. The suggestion\u00a0appeared to be\u00a0that\u00a0if only\u00a0Venezuelans ate less, there would\u00a0not\u00a0be a\u00a0shortage\u00a0of materials to clean backsides.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What the\u00a0statement\u00a0failed to\u00a0mention was the use of price caps by the\u00a0president,\u00a0Nicolas Maduro\u2014a forlorn attempt by the country\u2019s leader to shield the public from the effects of a broken and corrupt economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As\u00a0any\u00a0high-school economics\u00a0student\u00a0knows,\u00a0it is\u00a0applying\u00a0government\u00a0controls to markets which creates shortages, not eating too much.\u00a0Pricing signals\u00a0are\u00a0obscured\u00a0and\u00a0loss-making\u00a0items withdrawn from production\u00a0(toilet rolls, for example). Far from controlling inflation, price caps upset the demand-supply relationships\u00a0a\u00a0free market\u00a0relies on\u2014demand\u00a0outstrips\u00a0supply and inflation rises. By the end of the failed price cap experiment in 2013, Venezuelan food inflation had reached 76%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With inflation fears stalking the globe, politicians\u00a0are once again reaching for\u00a0the wrong lever. The U.K. is the latest, with Scotland announcing that it wants to cap the prices of\u00a0essential items like bread,\u00a0milk\u00a0and eggs at a state-enforced low price.\u00a0\u201cPeople are struggling to buy an adequate shop to support their families,\u201d John Swinney, the First Minister of the devolved nation, told cheering activists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more: A European central bank has signed a mega deal with a cloud service provider. The problem for Google,\u00a0Microsoft\u00a0and Amazon?\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0not with them<\/p>\n

The U.K. government appeared to distance itself from the plan, described by one business executive as \u201cpotty\u201d.\u00a0But\u00a0it\u00a0then revealed that it was also looking\u00a0at \u201cvoluntary\u201d price controls on key groceries.\u00a0The chief executive of Marks and Spencer, one of Britain\u2019s most popular retailers, said that the proposals were \u201ccompletely preposterous\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He is right, and the finance minister, Rachel Reeves, appears to have backed away from the plans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The U-turn hides a deeper problem. Faced with insipid economic growth, politicians have not taken the action\u00a0necessary to\u00a0spark\u00a0a resurgence,\u00a0such as capital and digital\u00a0markets\u00a0reform, lower levels of regulation and lower business taxes. Rather, they have tried to control the results of\u00a0the\u00a0ever-increasing burden on businesses\u00a0at the output stage (prices) when it is too late.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hungary has had some form\u00a0of\u00a0price controls since 2025.\u00a0Romania and Croatia\u00a0have\u00a0introduced price ceilings and\u00a0margin\u00a0controls.\u00a0Many EU countries have regulated\u00a0prices in\u00a0energy markets.\u00a0The U.K. has an energy price cap.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sometimes such interventions are necessary. Poor\u00a0political decision-making\u00a0has left Europe\u2019s energy system in a mess, and the consumer should not be\u00a0left\u00a0to\u00a0pick up the cost.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But political leaders should take care.\u00a0The U.K. has one of the most competitive retail sectors in the world, which brings consumers choice and low prices\u00a0already. Free markets are much better at producing the goods people want at the price people want them than individuals sitting in government\u00a0offices\u00a0looking at lines on a graph. Growth\u00a0is rarely\u00a0magicked into existence by more regulation.\u00a0In\u00a0almost every\u00a0case, the opposite is true.<\/p>\n

#Europe #isconsideringprice #caps #control #inflation.CEOsareshakingtheir #heads #despair<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the supply of toilet paper started running\u00a0out\u00a0back in 2013, the Venezuelan authorities\u00a0came up with\u00a0a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[6609,578,10867,1381,1652,176,12641,12640,4275,4276,2569,965],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6835"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}