Yen slips further into intervention territory

Hard times: An employee walks in front of monitors showing the yen’s exchange rate against the US dollar in Tokyo. The Japanese currency is the worst peforming in Asia this year and trading at 146.39 to the US dollar. — Reuters

TOKYO: The yen is back in prime intervention territory and analysts are debating whether its decline is extreme enough for Japanese authorities to prop up the currency as they did last month.

The currency fell to 146.39 per US dollar (RM4.67), surpassing the level that prompted Japan’s first intervention to buy the yen since 1998.