Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Monday obliquely pushed back against President Donald Trump’s pressure to aggressively slash interest rates, quoting a predecessor's insistence that the Fed must be "absolutely free" from politics.

In a short speech introducing a film on former Chairman Marriner Eccles, Powell praised the legacy of Eccles, who headed the Fed from 1934 to 1948 and for whom the central bank’s headquarters is named.


“Perhaps most importantly from my perspective as Fed Chair, he is responsible more than any other person for the fact that the United States today has an independent central bank — a central bank able to make decisions in the long-term best interest of the economy, without regard to the political pressures of the moment,” Powell said.