October is shaping up as a big month for new Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe. There’s his first RBA board meeting as governor, the first major report (the biannual Financial Stability Review) and his first major speech. That happens on October 18, with a speech to a dinner in Sydney at the end of a conference sponsored by Citibank. His speech will come a few hours after the release of the RBA’s second Financial Stability Review of the year, and a couple of days after the release of the minutes of Lowe’s first board meeting as governor (that’s on October 4). The Stability Review will be read with interest to see what the RBA says about bank culture after Lowe last week continued Glenn Stevens’ criticisms of the way the banks are sometimes being managed, at his first appearance before the House of Reps Economics Committee. Lowe has already given us a slightly more optimistic view of the way the economy is going (a point made earlier this month by the bank’s head of economics, assistant governor Christopher Kent).