Here's my summary of the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news of a warning about bank risk weightings.
(Updated with Fonterra auction results.)
But firstly, global stocks rebounded from their biggest drop in a month, bonds retreated and the ruble rallied as Russia stepped back from escalating the crisis in Ukraine. The Russian 'pullback' means they will keep the Crimean peninsular but spare further incursions - for now. Europe's dependence on Russian gas is a moderating influence on the West's rhetoric. It probably means Putin has won this skirmish.
Both oil and gold dropped sharply as the tensions appeared to recede. Oil lost US$2/barrel overnight and gold lost US$15/oz.
The Chinese central bank has started draining excess cash from their financial system again, pushing up short-term interest rates. It's recent move to engineer a weaker yuan has led to an unexpected and undesirable result: a sharp increase in cash flowing into its financial system.
China has also announced new record levels of exploitable oil and gas reserves in 2013.
In Europe, there was something of a surprise well away from the geopolitical tensions. Spain saw its unemployment fall by a few thousand, a far different result to the expected rise of 75,000. That's its first fall in seven years.
The US Obama Administration's 2015 budget is being presented to Congress today and assumes the fastest US growth since 2005 of 3.4% after 3.1% this year. It also sees inflation at 1.6% this year and 2% next year. And it is looking to reduce their Federal deficit from 3.7% of GDP to 3.1% next year.
Bond yields rose overnight, bouncing back up off their recent lows on the Ukraine news. Benchmark UST 10 yr rates have moved up to 2.66%. Yesterday our swap rates continued their flattening shift with short rates rising in anticipation of an OCR rise next week, and long rates falling.
And there was a warning overnight from a Basel banking regulator. He said banks must accept there is a problem with how they apply their risk weightings. He suggested they were in denial and signaled moves to tighten up on the 'uncomfortably wide' variability of how banks apply these risk weightings. I suspect NZ banks don't think there is a problem with the very loose RBNZ guidelines either.
The Fonterra auction fell today, down 4% in US dollars and down 4.8% in NZ dollars from the previous auction. Prices are still 15% ahead of the same time a year ago.
Although there were few changes for the kiwi dollar overnight, the minor trend that was there was higher. We start today at 83.8 USc, 93.8 AUc and the TWI is up a tick at 78.8.
If you want to catch up with all the changes yesterday, we have an update here.
The easiest place to stay up with today's event risk is by following our Economic Calendar here »
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