Re: The government will step in here
"I can see the Federal Trade Commission (in the USA) step in and regulate how often prices can be changed."
Here in the UK there was a big fuss a while ago about petrol stations hiking the price as soon as crude prices went up, but being a, err, lax, on dripping the forecourt price in line with drops in crude. The companies were threatened in such a way that it does seem to have had an effect. The local place I usually fill up at has prices varying up and down more or less in time with the price of crude, sometimes by a 1p per litre on a weekly to sometimes almost daily basis.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
