Guest Column
RFK Jr.'s Clash with CNN, Japan's Yen Intervention, and the Push for a New American Economic Order
A look at the Promethean Action commentary linking health policy, Middle East strategy, and monetary realignment.
Last Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. engaged in a heated exchange with CNN's Dana Bash on State of the Union. The interview quickly escalated into a contentious back-and-forth over vaccines, COVID-19 policies, and the role of experts.
Bash pressed Kennedy on vaccine hesitancy and cited extensive scientific studies showing no link between vaccines and autism, describing immunization as one of the most studied subjects in science. Kennedy rejected the framing, accused Bash of repeating talking points, insisted he had read the science himself, and said his job is telling the American people the truth. He criticized former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci and the media's reliance on experts. Bash pushed back, defending the vaccine data and arguing the exchange wasn't productive. Coverage described it as fiery, with the two talking over each other; critics called some of Kennedy's claims misinformation, while supporters saw a rare challenge to institutional narratives.
That confrontation is the opening for a broader analysis from Barbara Boyd of Promethean Action. In a recent midweek update, Boyd frames the RFK-Bash exchange not as an isolated media spat but as a symptom of a larger conflict: the media and “chattering class” failing to grasp, or deliberately obscuring, the strategic moves of the Trump administration. Those moves, in Boyd's telling, aim to dismantle the post-1971 speculative financial order centered in Wall Street and the City of London and rebuild a production-oriented American economy.
The Middle East Dimension: Oil Flows, Sovereignty, and Peace Through Development
Boyd argues that the ongoing conflict involving Iran is not a war of choice, contrary to critics on both the left and figures like Tucker Carlson. Trump, she contends, recognized from his first term that the United States is deeply enmeshed in global systems of finance, credit, materials, and production — particularly those tied to the offshore networks of the City of London. The 1973 oil shock, she notes, prompted Nelson Rockefeller's Commission on Critical Choices for Americans, a bipartisan panel that examined energy, resources, population, and economic growth amid fears that developing nations might form cartels over critical minerals and energy, similar to OPEC.
In Boyd's account, the response included promotion of environmentalism as a tool for limiting growth and a shift toward a financial system in which oil and gas speculation helped price the dollar after the end of the Bretton Woods gold-exchange standard in 1971. Under the Biden administration, she claims, this framework advanced to the point of restricting domestic oil and gas production and channeling credit toward green energy, contributing to inflation and debt. Trump inherited this system and began shifting toward physical production and manufacturing, but completing the shift required regaining control over credit and finance.
The Strait of Hormuz emerges as a critical chokepoint in this account. Disruptions there ripple through the global economy, and the City of London relies heavily on Gulf investment. Boyd asserts that London, via its historical ties to Oman, has complicated matters with proposals for voluntary tolls. Meanwhile, the war's dynamics and Trump's emphasis on a “Board of Peace” for the Middle East are, in her view, driving regional nations toward massive investment in the United States and away from the prior oil and financial regime. The Abraham Accords model — peace through economic development rather than perpetual religious conflict — is presented as the alternative, with Iran and its proxies standing in the way. Selling nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia is cited as one concrete step toward partnership with sovereign nations rather than dependency or permanent military entanglement. Critics from neoconservative or isolationist perspectives receive little sympathy in this framing; Boyd positions both as missing the strategic picture.
In reality, the U.S.-Iran conflict in 2026 has involved repeated cycles of strikes, threats over the Strait of Hormuz, temporary ceasefires and memoranda of understanding, and disputes over shipping routes and Iranian oil. U.S. actions have targeted Iranian military and nuclear-related infrastructure, while Iran has responded with attacks on shipping and regional bases. The waterway remains a flashpoint with direct effects on energy markets.
Scott Bessent's Yen Intervention: Stabilizing a Chokepoint and Hitting Competitors
The second pillar of Boyd's argument is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's coordinated intervention with Japan over the weekend of July 31–August 1, 2026. Japanese authorities and the U.S. Treasury jointly acted to support the yen after it approached multi-decade lows against the dollar. A Reuters photograph of Bessent's notepad at a Camp David cabinet meeting listed “Buy Japanese Yen $5–10 bil.” Reports indicated the U.S. side sold euros, rather than dollars, to purchase yen. Bessent later said the United States would do “whatever it takes” to support Japan's efforts in a manner consistent with American interests, describing the move as symbolic of confidence in Japanese policy and a response to excessive volatility and substantial undervaluation.
Boyd, citing analyst Tom Wongo, imagines a conversation in which Trump asks about Europe and Bessent pivots to Japan's long role as a tool in European financial strategies. Bessent's earlier career provides the historical parallel: as a young trader at George Soros's fund in 1992, he played a key role in the massive short against the British pound that forced the UK out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday, generating over $1 billion in profits for the firm. Boyd portrays the current yen action as running “the other trade” — supporting Japan while delivering a blow to the currencies of the UK and EU.
The yen carry trade is described as a debt bomb at the center of global finance, comparable in volatility to the Strait of Hormuz. After Japan's 1990s crash, near-zero rates allowed speculators to borrow cheaply in yen and invest in higher-yielding assets, including U.S. stocks and Treasuries. A sudden strengthening of the yen forces rapid unwinds, as seen in August 2024. Japan faces a dilemma: keep rates low and watch the yen weaken, fueling inflation at home, or raise them and risk a global market shock. Bessent's preemptive action, alongside pressure on Iran's financial networks, is framed as resetting monetary rules on more favorable terms rather than waiting for a crisis.
Canadian strategist James Thorne has argued that Bessent is helping construct a new Bretton Woods — a more stable, long-term, low-interest monetary framework suited to real economic development. Boyd endorses this view. Thorne and others have publicly discussed “Bretton Woods 2.0” in the context of debt dynamics, gold revaluation possibilities, and strategic realignments, though mainstream analysis focuses more narrowly on managing yen volatility, supporting an ally, and limiting spillover risks to U.S. yields and Asian currencies.
Rebuilding the American System: Production, Skills, and Harmony of Interests
Boyd contrasts the post-1971 speculative model with the American System of political economy associated with Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, and now Trump. She invokes Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative as an example of how demanding advanced physical production can expose systemic weaknesses — in that case, the Soviet Union's. Outsourcing and the erosion of technological depth in the U.S. labor force, she argues, left America vulnerable to similar decline, until Trump's approach.
Two conditions are required in this account: long-term, low-interest capital, addressed by breaking the hold of globalist finance and reshoring industry, and a scientifically trained, prosperous labor force. On July 21, 2026, White House science adviser Michael Kratsios released the report Science: A New Golden Age. Boyd highlights its emphasis on integrating classroom and shop-floor training in STEM degrees, creating national fellowships that elevate technicians and machinists alongside PhD researchers, upgrading apprenticeships into advanced fields, and fostering dense local clusters where research labs and factories operate in proximity.
She quotes Abraham Lincoln's economist Henry Carey on the “harmony of interests” between capital and labor under a system that treats the human mind as the unlimited source of economic progress. Both communism and the free-trade capitalism dominant since 1971, in this view, reject that principle — the latter by driving labor costs to the lowest possible level through outsourcing.
Perspective and Context
Promethean Action's analysis is rooted in a long-standing tradition associated with the LaRouche movement: a Hamiltonian focus on national banking, infrastructure, scientific progress, and opposition to what it describes as British financial imperialism centered in the City of London. The commentary is explicitly promotional, urging readers to subscribe to the free newsletter and contribute financially so the perspective can reach a wider audience.
Factual anchors exist for several elements: the RFK-Bash interview occurred and was contentious; Bessent's joint yen intervention is documented and unusual in its euro-selling component and use of Fed facilities; the Science: A New Golden Age report was issued and prioritizes AI-enabled discovery, workforce development, and industrial translation of science; and the Middle East conflict has repeatedly centered on Hormuz and Iranian capabilities. Bessent's role in the 1992 pound crisis is a matter of public record.
Broader claims about a coordinated project to overthrow a singular “City of London” system, the precise motivations behind every policy move, and the characterization of media coverage as uniform lying remain interpretive and contested. Mainstream reporting treats the yen action primarily as a stability measure for a key ally and the regional economy, the science report as an attempt to reorient federal R&D amid debates over university funding and priorities, and the Iran conflict as a mix of nuclear nonproliferation, deterrence, and energy-security concerns. Alternative interpretations — from isolationist critiques of entanglement to progressive concerns about militarism or climate policy — receive little space in Boyd's update.
The core thesis advanced by Promethean Action is that Trump's policies on finance, energy, the Middle East, Japan, and workforce training form a coherent project: restoring American productive sovereignty and replacing a speculative, post-1971 order with one oriented toward physical economy and scientific progress. Whether that project succeeds, and whether the underlying diagnosis of the global financial system is accurate, will be tested by events in the coming years.