[Harold James] The dollar's outer defenses have been breached

In a Reuters photo from late July, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent can be seen holding a to-do list with just one item: purchase $5 billion-$10 billion worth of yen. As he explained soon thereafter, invoking the famous phrase that then-European Central Bank President Mario Draghi used to save the euro in 2012, the Trump administration will do “whatever it takes” to prop up the Japanese currency. Bessent’s public rationale for this surprise intervention was that the yen is undervalued, and th