Diary: A Big Week For The Reserve Bank In Australia

The Reserve Bank is back on centre stage in Australia this week with a series of public commentaries or speeches planned.

Later today, Governor, Glenn Stevens speaks in Hong Kong.

Tomorrow the minutes of the March 6 board meeting are released, and later in the day Assistant Governor, Malcolm Edey speaks to cards and payments conference in Sydney.

His speech will no doubt cover the latest RBA research on credit cards and payments after several bits of research recently and a move by the central bank to consider the structure of the electronic payment system once again.

On Thursday Assistant Governor Guy Debelle speaks about bank funding, a speech that will be based on the latest research on the movement in bank funding costs published in the RBA Bulletin last Thursday.

A two day iron ore and steel forecasting conference will be held in Perth on Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Wednesday the latest forecasts for mineral and energy exports will be released by the Bureau of Resource and Energy Economics in Canberra.

Elsewhere it's a quiet week here for data.

In corporate news, interim earnings are expected from retailers, David Jones and Kathmandu (both Wednesday) this week, and full year results from Sigma Pharmaceuticals (Thursday).

The Bank of Queensland is down to release interim results on Thursday as well.

Interim results are also expected on Thursday from linked companies Brickworks Ltd and Washington H. Soul Pattinson.

Premier Investments (Just Group) is down to release its interim results on Friday.

Meetings include Straits Metals, Advance Energy, Birimian Gold Ltd, Intec Ltd, iiNet Ltd, Forge Resources, Genesis Minerals, PaperlinX Ltd, SVC Group Ltd, Western Manganese Ltd and Encounter Resources Ltd.

In the US, expect the NAHB housing conditions index (Monday) to show a further improvement, housing starts (Tuesday) to fall back slightly after recent gains and a further recovery in existing home sales (Wednesday) and new home sales (Friday). Data for house prices and leading indicators will also be released.

Earnings from economic bellwether FedEx Corp, as well as tech giant, Oracle Corp. and sportswear giant, Nike Inc.

There are a number of speeches from speeches from Federal Reserve officials, including chairman Ben Bernanke.

Monday sees New York Federal Reserve president William Dudley speak on the US economy. Dallas Federal Reserve president Richard Fisher will sit on a roundtable at the Centre for the study of Financial Innovation in the US. And Fed chairman Bern Bernanke speaks in Washington mid week on lessons from the GFC.

Mr Bernanke delivers a four-part lecture series about the Federal Reserve and the financial crisis on March 20, 22, 27, and 29.

Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen will moderate a panel of central banks on crisis on Saturday.

In Europe, the UK budget for 2012-13 is out this week the Euro-zone business conditions indicators (PMIs) will be published (Thursday) as will data for consumer confidence, industrial orders, the current account and construction output.

In Asia, the flash HSBC PMI for Chinese manufacturing will be published (Thursday) and is likely to show ongoing evidence of stabilisation around the 50 level, which is consistent with GDP growth of around 8-9%.

Financial results in the coming days from the Agricultural Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Bank of China.

On Thursday, Japan releases the preliminary trade balance for February.

After reporting its first trade deficit in 30 years in 2011 - thanks to higher imports of fuels such as LNG to run its power plants and make up for the loss of nuclear power, Japan reported a trade deficit in January with exports cut by the Lunar New Year in China