Japan’s foreign exchange intervention hits record 15.4 trillion yen in a single month

Japan just set a new record nobody in Tokyo’s finance ministry wanted to break. The government spent 15.4 trillion yen on foreign exchange intervention last month, the largest single-month currency defense operation in the country’s history. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly $100 billion deployed in a matter of weeks to buy yen and slow its slide against the dollar. A mounting pattern of escalation This new record eclipses what was already a year of extraordinary intervention. In 2024, Japan spent approximately 15.3 trillion yen (around $99 billion) across the entire year to stabilize its currency. The fact that a single month now matches a full year’s prior spending tells you everything about the trajectory here. The previous monthly record was set during late April to May 2024, when Japan deployed 9.8 trillion yen. Earlier this year, Japan conducted what was reportedly its largest single-day yen-buying operation on April 30, spending 6.28 trillion yen in a single session. Between late April and late May, the Ministry of Finance spent 11.73 trillion yen ($73 billion) on interventions. The foreign reserves problem Currency intervention isn’t free money conjured from thin a...