Beverlee Kornblum YEuX

#USAndJapanJointlyInterveneToBuyYen Japan just fired the biggest currency intervention in its history, and the US joined in for the first time in 30 years. Thursday's yen buying hit roughly 8.45 trillion yen, about $52.8 billion in a single day. Then the New York Fed sold euros to buy yen for the US Treasury. The last time Washington and Tokyo intervened together was the 1990s. The yen still sits near 157, a stone's throw from its weakest level since 1986. Here is why the US cares. A yen in freefall forces Japan, the largest foreign holder of US Treasuries, to sell those bonds to fund the defense. It also threatens to unwind the carry trade, and hedge funds are sitting on $9.5 billion of short-yen bets. When the two biggest checkbooks on earth fire together and the currency barely moves, the next leg is a disorderly unwind that pushes up US yields and hits US stocks.$TAKE $IDOL $COTI