Recently, on a radio show looking at oil company behavior and high gas prices, a senior economist at the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade association, made the claim that oil companies are regulated not only by their customers, but also by those who hold stock in the companies. True.

The economist went a bit further to say that the federal government need not broaden oversight of oil company practices because those companies are already accountable to the American public, mostly because the American public are shareholders in oil companies. False.

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