Colin Risdahl

I have a point of view based on the past about today.

I do not see any kind of price caps in our future.

A little econ 101 here.

Price caps, just like it sounds, they limit the price at which any given product can be sold below what the market price would be.

It can be on one product or on all of them, which is what Nixon had done.

And then the Arab oil embargo came along.

The shortages we were suffering then were not super acute.

Even if you don't personally remember back that far, your parents probably do.

Ask them about the lines to buy gas.

But we made them more acute by our panic-like behavior, by lining up for hours and hours and traveling around with much of the country's gas supply in our tanks rather than safely underground in oil storage.

It was not great.

But the fact is, today's oil shock is worse, way worse.

The International Energy Agency says it could take two years to recover.

The key macroeconomic point here is that however much petroleum pain American consumers are feeling, it is worse in the rest of the world, which is why some of them are turning to price caps.

In South Korea, the government put a ceiling on fuel products about a month ago.

Just today, they announced they would keep them in place for another two weeks.

In France, the company Total Energies voluntarily capped the price of gas and diesel at its stations through the end of April.

Governments and companies are going to do what governments and companies are going to do.

But if you ask an economist, they will tell you price caps can lead to some real problems.

Because the price...