Did dollar bail out yen or vice-versa? Currency war, activism or attempt to stop de-dollarisation

Synopsis The US Treasury went into the market last Friday and bought yen, the first joint intervention to lift the currency in almost three decades. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s to-do list, photographed at a cabinet meeting that morning, read buy yen, $5-10 billion. There is no confirmation that it had to do with the intervention. The more consequential move was not the yen buying at all. It might indicate something which no one would like to confirm. A government defending its own currency is routine. Every country, including India, has done it for years. (We are again doing it with…