Republican presidential contender Donald Trump has once again accused the Federal Reserve of keeping interest rates low at the behest of President Barack Obama, who Trump says wants to avoid an economic depression during his administration.
"They are not raising them because Obama has asked them not to raise them," Trump said Tuesday at a news conference at his company's New York City headquarters, reported Reuters. "He wants to get out of office, because we're in a bubble, and when those rates are raised, a lot of bad things are going to happen."
He added: "Janet Yellen is highly political and she's not raising rates for a very specific reason: because Obama told her not to because he wants to be out playing golf in a year from now and he wants to be doing other things and he doesn't want to see a big bubble burst during his administration."
White House spokesman Josh Earnest insisted that the Federal Reserve acts independently from the Obama administration, adding that the administration "goes to great lengths" to ensure the central bank acts only on the interests of the economy in order "to prevent those decision from being influenced or even tainted by more narrow political considerations," according to the Associated Press.
"That has been an important principle of policy making in this country and it's one that this administration has worked assiduously to protect," Earnest said.
Earlier in October, the Fed decided against raising short-term interest rates from their record low near zero, showing a rise in concern about the job market as well as concern over low inflation rates, according to NPR.
Trump's comments on Tuesday echo similar ones he made last month, when he warned that the stock market bubble is on the verge of popping.
Yellen is "keeping the economy going, barely," Trump told The Hill. "The reason they're keeping the interest rate down is Obama doesn't want to have a recession-slash-depression during his administration."
"You know who gets hurt the most? People who practice the American dream and did what should have been the right way - the people that went through 40 years of their life and saved a hundred dollars every week [in the bank]," Trump said.
"They worked all their lives to save and now what happens is they're being forced into an inflated stock market and at some point they'll get wiped out," he added.
