Trump stuck with Powell despite strains

MINNEAPOLIS Federal Reserve president Neel Kashkari's defiance on the US Federal Reserve's interest rate increases has made commentators wonder if he was angling for Jerome Powell's job as Fed chair.

Mr Kashkari's broadside in a Wall Street Journal article late last month could well have been written by Donald Trump himself. The US president has been complaining loudly and often how much Mr Powell's policy bothers him because it threatens "his economy".

His criticism has been so vociferous that it has raised the question of whether he could replace Mr Powell with someone more accommodating, in every sense of the word. For instance, Neel Kashkari.