Scott Bessent signals new era of US currency activism with coordinated yen intervention

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed a coordinated intervention alongside Japan to buy yen, putting real dollars behind the kind of currency activism that Washington has mostly left on the shelf since the Obama era. The move, confirmed on August 1, involves plans to purchase between $5 billion and $10 billion in Japanese yen. The notepad that moved markets The intervention details first surfaced during a Camp David cabinet meeting on July 31, when Bessent’s handwritten notepad outlined the yen purchase range for cameras to capture. Bessent’s public statement framed the action as a response to “disorderly yen movements.” The yen has been trading at levels not seen in nearly 40 years against the dollar. The coordinated nature of the intervention is what makes it genuinely notable. Bessent confirmed active collaboration with officials from Japan’s Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Japan, meaning American dollars were deployed alongside Japanese reserves in a joint operation. This is the first yen-buying intervention by the US in over a decade. Why the US decided to get involved Bessent also proposed upsizing the Federal Reserve’s FIMA Repo Facility as a complementary measur...