Power Of The Market

Wencke Hovet, the widowed mother of a 9-year-old child, was deeply moved when she read in the newspaper recently about two elderly people in Norway who died of hypothermia because they could no longer afford to heat their houses. But she felt the chill personally when she opened her own electric bill last month. Covering October, November and December, when Norway was experiencing unusually cold weather, the bill demanded $2,745. It wasn't a typo. "It's totally crazy," she said. "They just exploited the situation."

The "situation" Hovet refers to is the free market in electricity that has outraged...