In the long arc of currency history, moments arise when nations must choose between the appearance of control and its substance. Japan and the United States, confronting a yen at its weakest in four decades, have chosen to act together — intervening in foreign-exchange markets for the first time since 1998 — buying time, perhaps, but not yet buying a solution. The yen's modest Friday recovery, nudged along by soft American economic data, reminds us that markets are moved by psychology as much as by policy, and that the distance between a signal and a structural fix can be vast.
Yen surges on dollar weakness as markets brace for fresh intervention
Economy & Finance