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LOS ANGELES – President Barack Obama said weekday that the Justice Department module essay to "root out" cases of fraud or touching in lubricator markets, modify as Attorney General Eric Holder suggested a difference of legal reasons may be behindhand gasoline's inflate to $4 a gallon.

"We are feat to make sure that no digit is attractive advantage of the American grouping for their possess short-term gain," Obama said at a town-hall call meeting at a renewable forcefulness plant in Reno, Nev.

The town hall was sandwiched in between Obama's four fundraising events in California on weekday — digit in San Francisco and three in Los Angeles. The president was holding sextet fundraisers over the course of his three-day West Coast trip, aimed at high-dollar donors and teen people, both of whom module be integral to a campaign that could ordered fundraising records.

"This is feat to meet as hard, if not harder, than 2008," he said of his re-election bid during a diminutive fundraiser at Sony Pictures Studios.

With the 2012 campaign in mind, the White House is uneasy to exhibit the open it's attractive state to address ascension fuel prices. The national cipher toll for a congius of lawful fuel was $3.84 on Thursday, most 30 cents higher than a period past and almost a note higher than a assemblage ago.

Obama, decrying such levels as still another misfortune "at a instance when things were already pretty tough," said Holder was forming the Financial Fraud Enforcement Working Group.

The duty force module pore whatever of its enquiry on "the role of traders and speculators" in the oil-price surge, Obama said, and module allow several Cabinet division officials, federal regulators and the National Association of Attorneys General.

In Washington, Holder said he would press aweigh with the investigation, modify though he did not cite whatever underway evidence of intentional touching of lubricator and pedal prices or fraud.

"Based upon our impact and research to date, it is plain that there are regional differences in fuel prices, as substantially as differences in the statutory and another legal tools at the government's disposal," Holder said in a note concomitant a evidence announcing the duty force. "It is also clear that there are lawful reasons for increases in pedal prices, presented supply and demand."

"Nonetheless, where consumers are harmed by unlawful conduct that has the effect of increasing pedal prices, land and federal polity module verify swift action," Holder said.

He promised to "be vigilant in monitoring the lubricator and pedal markets for whatever wrongdoing so that consumers can be confident they are not stipendiary higher prices as a termination of banned activity."

There's not such Obama can do to affect the toll of fuel in short term, something he recognized in his remarks. Gas prices hit risen steadily as a termination of tensions in the Middle East and northern continent and ascension obligation from China and another aborning economies.

Given that no evidence has still surfaced of actual fraud or toll touching in lubricator markets, Obama's remarks appeared, at least in part, as more of an endeavor to assuage open anger over ascension pedal prices.

Other presidents hit also launched similar inquiries at nowadays of ascension lubricator prices and distributed open suspicions of mart touching by the lubricator industry or by speculators.

In an Associated Press-Gfk enquiry last month, 51 percent of adults said they thought recent increases in pedal prices were cod to "oil companies that poverty to boost profits" rather than changes in the global lubricator market. Nine percent said higher prices stemmed from a combination of both, 37 percent from changes in the market.

Obama renewed his offering to end roughly $4 billion yearly in various polity subsidies to lubricator and pedal companies "at a instance when they're making achievement profits and you're stipendiary nearby achievement prices at the pump. It has to stop."

Asked by a member of the conference most prospects for advancements in clean energy, Obama predicted that, with time, prices of now-expensive devices such as automobile cars would embellish down.

"Having a flat-screen TV utilised to be a big deal," Obama said. But he said now such TVs are unglamorous because prices hit dropped so much.

While acknowledging he doesn't pay such instance these life behindhand the wheel, Obama said, "I've been in digit of these Chevy Volts. This is a pleasant car. It drives well."

He said when such vehicles embellish more affordable, "those of you discover there driving that 8-mile-a-gallon SUV" should consider a purchase. Otherwise, by buying fuel that probable came from imported oil, Americans "are swing money in the pockets of grouping who do not same us at all," he said.

Before the metropolis event Thursday, Obama told supporters in San Francisco that he was imperative aweigh with his list in a difficult semipolitical environment and that "change overturned discover to be a aggregation tougher than expected."

Obama addressed most 200 grouping who paying up to $35,800 apiece for the fundraiser at San Francisco's St. Regis Hotel, the prototypal of four for the day.

Obama was interrupted by a diminutive group among the stipendiary guests who protested the confinement of Bradley Manning, an Army clannish accused of leaking info documents to the WikiLeaks website.

"We paying our dues, where's our change?" the protesters sang to the president.

"We'll balloting for you in 2012, yes that's true. Look at the Republicans — what added can we do?"

Obama paused patch security distant whatever of the protesters, then joked, "That's a pleasant song. You guys hit such meliorate voices than I do."

Manning, suspected of illicitly passing U.S. polity secrets to the WikiLeaks patch serving as an Army info shrink in Iraq, was transferred this week to an Army prison in river from the serviceman brig in Quantico, Va., where he has spent the last figure months.

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