During a cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday, the US treasury secretary Scott Bessent carelessly revealed plans for the US to buy $5-$10bn in Japanese yen in a scribbled “to do” list left visible to a Reuters photographer.
The image, taken over Bessent’s shoulder during a portion of the meeting open to journalists, showed a Camp David notepad with the underscored words “To Do” followed by “Buy Japanese Yen (JPY) $5-10 bil”.
Bessent’s name card on the Camp David conference table is visible and positioned immediately above the notepad.
The photograph was taken at 11.33am local time, Reuters reported.
A treasury spokesperson did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the contents of the notepad, “or whether the treasury had intervened to help prop up the yen’s value against the dollar on Friday”, the news agency said.
Earlier on Friday, about two hours before the note was seen in front of Bessent, Reuters reported that the treasury department had notified a number of banks that it could intervene in the yen market that day, an unnamed source said.
Japanese authorities had stepped in to prop up the yen earlier on Friday, triggering a substantial strengthening of the Japanese currency during early trading hours.
There appears to have been another sizeable strengthening of the yen against the dollar during the late afternoon on Friday.
Data from LSEG shows the dollar dropped from about 158.9 yen at around 4.14 pm ET to about 157.6 yen just before 5pm – a drop of about 0.8%.
The US treasury has not intervened to prop up the yen since 2011, when it joined other G7 countries in a coordinated action after a devastating earthquake and tsunami rocked Japan.
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