According to reporting by the Financial Times, the major governments and central banks of the so-called "Free World" — the United States, Western Europe, and Japan — were all involved in what has been described as a "historic" intervention last week in support of the Japanese yen. Notably, the governments of China and Russia were not participants.

Coordinated currency intervention by the world's major economies is rare. The most frequently cited historical precedent remains the 1985 Plaza Accord, in which the G5 nations jointly agreed to drive down the U.S. dollar. Direct U.S.-Japanese collaboration to support the yen, as occurred here, had not been seen since 1998, when Washington and Tokyo acted together during the Asian financial crisis. Japan had conducted unilateral yen-buying interventions in both 2022 and 2024, spending substantial reserves with only limited and temporary effect, which underscored the significance of securing explicit U.S. participation this time.

Writing for the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA), Secretary/Treasurer Chris Powell observed that the intervention was, by definition, the product of conspiracy — policy devised and carried out in secret — yet no mainstream financial news organization described it as such.

Powell raised the question of whether these same governments and central banks might also be privately communicating and coordinating policy on gold. He noted that mainstream financial outlets do not pursue this line of inquiry, and that individuals who document such communications and policies — as GATA has attempted here — risk being dismissed as conspiracy theorists.

A chart of the U.S. dollar priced in Japanese yen during the week in question is available here.

Powell questioned how technical analysis would explain the market movement, why it failed to anticipate the intervention, and how reliable such analysis can be in markets subject to government and central bank manipulation. The yen's persistent weakness in the period leading up to the intervention had been driven in large part by a wide interest-rate differential between the Bank of Japan, which maintained ultra-accommodative monetary policy, and the Federal Reserve, which held rates at elevated levels — a divergence that currency intervention alone cannot structurally resolve.

U.S. Treasury Undertakes Historic Intervention in Yen Market

By Kate Duguid, Claire Jones, Katie Martin, Ian Smith, and David Keohane — Financial Times, London — Friday, July 31, 2026

The U.S. Treasury intervened in yen exchange rates on Friday, marking the first time Tokyo and Washington joined forces to support the Japanese currency through outright purchases in nearly 30 years.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York carried out the unusual step of selling euros to purchase yen on behalf of the Treasury, according to three people familiar with the matter. The transactions were executed through Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, according to two of those sources.

The Treasury had previously informed several Wall Street banks that it was considering an intervention to support the Japanese currency, which on July 23 reached its weakest level against the dollar since 1986.

U.S. authorities were in communication with European Central Bank officials regarding the move, according to people familiar with the situation.

The New York Fed and Goldman Sachs declined to comment. The Treasury Department and Morgan Stanley did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Atsushi Mimura, Japan's vice-minister of finance for international affairs, stated: "We understand that we are receiving support from the U.S. authorities that goes beyond mere moral support. We have been in constant contact with them."

The remainder of the Financial Times report is available here.

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Chris Powell is a journalist in Connecticut and secretary/treasurer of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. (GATA), which he co-founded in 1999. He can be reached at [email protected].