We're About to Go Into War, World War II

In the early 1940s, President Franklin Roosevelt was told by economists that he couldn't allow the market to work. The rich were going to bid up the price of scarce goods and bitterly enrage everybody else, they warned him. So FDR ordered rationing so people could get what they needed without having to buy it themselves. Now we have a similar situation in which wages are frozen for labor groups who want higher pay; inflation stops on a dime.