What’s life like in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela? Well, the economy is soaked in petrodollars, so there’s rampant inflation. Chavez has responded with price controls on 400 products. This means that producers aren’t getting back what they paid to produce their goods, so they’re not taking them to market. Sugar is being stored; supermarkets have suspended sales of beef. Lynne Kiesling comments:

I find this exercise of government hubris and arrogance so sickening that it literally nauseates me. Think of the harm that he’s doing to the very people who he manages to demagogue into voting for him. The cumulative effects of this type of policy and his destruction of capital assets in Venezuela’s oil industry make me feel very, very sorry for the Venezuelan people.

Me too.