TOKYO – Japan’s Yoshihide Suga had that rarest of things on Monday – good news on Asia’s second-biggest economy.
The Bank of Japan’s closely-watched Tankan survey of business sentiment rebounded in the latest quarter. It’s still in negative territory amid Covid-19 disruptions. But the -10 reading, up from -27 in September, suggests conditions are stabilizing.
Well, make that were stabilizing.
Three other data points this week point to a resumption in the drop in demand that ended Japan’s longest expansion since the 1980s. One is the more than 3,000 new coronavirus cases the nation is recording per day as a third wave of infections intensifies.
