Intervention.

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(The News Items Podcast, Episode #22: Interview with Rebecca Patterson. Recorded on 12 August 2026. Produced by Dale Eisinger. You can find this podcast, and previous News Items podcasts, on most of the major platforms, including Apple, Amazon and Spotify.)

Here’s (the first half of) Rebecca’s resume:

Rebecca Patterson is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). A globally recognized investor and macro-economic researcher with more than twenty-five years of experience across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, Patterson studies how politics and policy intersect with economic trends to drive financial markets.

Patterson is currently an independent director at Vanguard, a global asset manager overseeing more than $10 trillion in assets. She co-hosts a weekly CFR podcast, The Spillover, which examines the ripple effects of global events across policy, geopolitics, economics, technology, and financial markets. Through the Washington Speakers Bureau, she is also a frequently requested speaker on macro-economic and financial market topics.

Previously, Patterson was chief investment strategist for Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund. From 2012 through 2019, Patterson was chief investment officer of Bessemer Trust, a multi-family office where she managed $85 billion in client assets. Before joining Bessemer, Patterson spent more than fifteen years at JPMorgan, where she worked as a researcher in the firm’s investment bank in Europe, Singapore, and the U.S., served as chief investment strategist in the asset management arm of the firm, and ran the Private Bank’s global currency and commodity trading desk. Patterson’s transition to finance came after several years working as a journalist, covering financial markets, policy, and politics in the U.S. and Europe. (Source: cfr.org)

The last time the United States intervened to support the yen was in 1998, during the Asian financial crisis. “A stable yen is not only important for the U.S., but very important for the entire region,” said U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

This was news, in part because it was unexpected and in part because it was…unusual. An Asian financial crisis did not (does not) seem imminent. The Treasury selling Euros to buy Yen qualifies as “unusual”. And there were concerns about what “the intervention” implied about the U.S. balance sheet.

The financial press covered it as a “lead story”. A podcast about it required an expert. Ergo: Rebecca Patterson.

The “Yen intervention” consumes roughly half of this episode. Rebecca’s explanation of what happened and why (and what it might “signal”) is both sophisticated and plain-spoken. You learn a lot in 20 minutes or so. And you come away with a good grasp of what’s going on and why a lot of very smart people are concerned about it.

We also talked about prediction markets. Are they useful forecasting tools or virtual casinos? I have a theory that a lot of young men have unfortunately come to the conclusion that their paths to success are narrow at best. In order to “make it”, they’ve embraced “prediction markets” as a means to (some measure of) wealth. Since the house always wins, it won’t end well for most.

Finally, this being The News Items Podcast, Rebecca and I discuss the impact of AI on the financial “community” and financial markets.

The News Items Podcast “works” if the guest is great. This one worked very well.

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P.S.: Many thanks to Alan D. Thompson for his generous praise of The News Items Podcast. He too was a great guest. If you’re not a subscriber to his newsletter — The Memo — I highly recommend it.