The US Treasury Department on Wednesday stuck by its reluctance to support any potential intervention into currency markets to halt the yen’s depreciation, after the Japanese currency slumped to its weakest against the dollar since 1998.
(Bloomberg) — The US Treasury Department on Wednesday stuck by its reluctance to support any potential intervention into currency markets to halt the yen’s depreciation, after the Japanese currency slumped to its weakest against the dollar since 1998.
Treasury spokesman Michael Gwin, asked Wednesday if the department’s stance had changed in any way since Secretary Janet Yellen discussed the issue of the yen and intervention in Tokyo in July, said in an emailed response to a question that he didn’t “have anything more to add at this time,” declining to elaborate further.
The yen is heading for its biggest annual drop on record, in a slump that’s prompted an escalating series of warnings from Japanese government officials. The currency was down about 1% as of 10:35 a.m. in New York, at 144.34 per dollar, bringing its 2022 decline to more than 20%.
Yellen in July said, “In general, our view is that countries like Japan, the United States, the G-7 countries, should have market-determined exchange rates.” She added, after a meeting with Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki, “Only in rare and exceptional circumstances is intervention warranted and we did not discuss intervention.”
Read More: Yellen Shows No Willingness to Consider Intervention for Yen
(Adds that no further comment was made, in second paragraph.)
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