What is under a President's control?

A psychologist might call this an attribution error, an error in attributing responsibility for a persons success or failure in a given situation. An economist can explain why in our system the President does not have the ability to significantly impact the price of gas. To me this is in an interesting example of one of the more interesting points of contention in Economic Systems. The stability vs. efficiency question, if the U.S. president had greater influence the price would probably not have risen as much but the market would be less efficient. Furthermore in a market system as a resource grows more scarce and/or demand increases the price mechanism naturally encourages research into alternative resources. That being said while we are waiting for the market to achieve equilibrium people are suffering. Therefore there is a compromise that must be made and one which we have (sort of) made. We have for example strategic oil and gas reserves which could in a moment of crisis be distributed to those most in need. This is obviously a somewhat limited response, a more long term solution for smoothing out price spike would be international agreements that limit speculation.