Yen Hits 3-Year High Vs. Dollar
The yen soared to a three-year high against the U.S. dollar yesterday, after Japan released better-than-expected numbers about its troubled economy.</br></br>According to overnight reports from Tokyo, Japan's central bank intervened in the market in a effort to halt the rise, out of fear that it would damage Japan's tentative recovery from a decade of economic malaise.</br></br>The effort appeared to be working--by late morning Friday Tokyo time, it took 109.92 yen to buy a dollar, 1.08 yen more than it had taken there the previous day.</br></br>A senior U.S. policymaker appeared to signal that the United States was not sufficiently worried about the yen and the resulting decline in the dollar to join in any intervention. William McDonough, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said, "I don't believe the change in the dollar-yen exchange rates has particularly significant implications for the U.S. economy," Reuters reported.</br></br>In late trading yesterday in New York, it took only 108.06 yen to buy a dollar, about 3 percent less than the previous day.