President Donald Trump renewed his verbal assault against the Federal Reserve on Monday, comparing the central bank to a blundering golfer after the stock market tanked yet again.

“The only problem our economy has is the Fed,” Trump tweeted. “The Fed is like a powerful golfer who can’t score because he has no touch – he can’t putt!”

The Federal Reserve is meant to be independent from the White House but Trump has trampled those barriers in his frustration at what he sees as the bank’s harmful interest rate policies.

He has previously called the Fed, which angered him by hiking rates last week, “crazy” and a greater economic threat to the United States than China.

Reports that Trump was even sounding out cabinet members on whether he had authority to fire Fed Chairman Jerome Powell forced Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to spend much of the weekend in damage control mode.

A lifelong real estate developer, Trump has touted the booming US economy as one of his presidency’s main achievements.

But the stock market is in steep retreat as investor nerves grow over the fallout from Trump’s erratic style and his trade war with China.

The Dow Jones index closed Monday down more than 650 points, bad news for swaths of ordinary Americans whose savings and retirement plans are tied up on Wall Street.

CNBC reported the losses were the worst ever for Wall Street on Christmas Eve, a holiday-shortened session ahead of Tuesday, when markets will be closed.

With Trump and Congress locked in a standoff over his inability to get approval for a $5 billion US-Mexico border wall project, analysts fear that 2019 will bring ever greater risk of political instability and dysfunction, feeding further market runs.