Rome, Italy-based Eni S.p.A. (E) is an integrated energy company operating in the oil, natural gas, electricity generation, petrochemicals, oilfield services, and engineering industries. Eni was Italy's national oil company prior to its 1995 privatization. The Italian government is still its largest shareholder, with about a 30% stake.We are maintaining our Hold recommendation on Eni ADRs after the company's fourth-quarter results. We continue to believe that the company's positive production-growth profile, capital discipline and attractive dividend are adequately reflected in its premium valuation relative to its European peers.We are increasingly concerned with Eni's high valuation, relative to its historical norms and as production growth slows, the stock could come under significant pressure.Read the full analyst report on E "E" Free Stock Analysis: Buy? Sell? Hold?Zacks Investment Research

by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaItaly, which is still the eurozone's third biggest economy, slipped into a recession in the third quarter. The Italian economy fell into what is now its fourth recession in less than a decade as gross domestic product shrank 0.5 percent from its level in the second quarter, when it contracted a revised 0.4 percent, the national statistics office said today. This is already Italy's worst recession since 1992, and there is evidently more and worse to come.Italy effectively followed Germany, Europe's largest economy, in posting two consecutive quarters of contraction -- the technical definition of a recession. Spain contracted on the quarter, while France narrowly avoided recession by posting a slender 0.1% expansion after contracting in the second quarter.From the third quarter of 2007 the economy contracted 0.9 percent, and this was the sharpest ...

The U.S. isn’t the only country rolling back on free-market principles. Communist China is also busy bailing out its economy. Over the weekend, the People’s Republic announced a $586 billion ’stimulus’ plan of it own. U.S stock futures are up on the news.

- Italy may be the next country to ‘rescue’ its economy with taxpayers’ money. According the The Times the Italian government was working on plans over the weekend to pump as much as $26 billion into its biggest banks.

- Uncle Sam is about to bailout AIG from its bailout. Apparently, the original handout was too tough on poor old AIG. So now its going to get a sweeter deal. This from the WSJ:

The U.S. government reached a deal Sunday night to scrap its original $123 billion bailout of American International Group Inc. and replace it with a new $150

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As every woman who has ever had dealings with a man knows only too well, it is a lot easier for people to make promises than it is for them to keep them. And when Europe's leaders met in Paris on the 12 October, a lot of fine promises (which were all, surely, very well intentioned) were made. The reality of having to live up to them, however, is turning out, as might only have been expected, to be much more complicated.Basically, the kernel of the plan which is now being operationalised seems to have been thrashed out in Washington on 11 October, when key G7 leaders met with Dominique Strauss Kahn of the IMF, and it was decided to try and erect two great firewalls (corta fuegos) - at least as far as Europe is concerned. One of these was to be co-ordinated by the EU governments, ...

by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaTaking my cue from the worthy and well thumbed play-book of the Brothers Coen, I thought every now and again I might follow up all those, long, desperately serious, and highly indigestible posts about how Italy should now be considered to be "No Country For Old Men", with something in rather lighter vein. The highly acclaimed and award winning Miss Iceland Look-alike show is not the only prime time TV talent contest we are going to see over the coming weeks and months it seems. We are also apparently on the verge of watching a beefed up and much more macho version, whose pilot screenings have now been launched under the working "Man-City/Emirates Stadium" look-alike title, since news today informs us that the Libyan government is at this very moment in the process of bailing out Italy's much troubled banking ...

by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaWell, it's official, or at least its as near official as it's going to get at this point: the Eurozone is in its first recession. And how do I know this? Well Frankfurt-based Financial Times European economy correspondent Ralph Atkins told me it was, in this article last Tuesday. Joking aside, this line-judge ruling (we will remember the eurozone doesn't have an official referee with the authority to call recessions like the US NBER) from Ralph is significant, both due to the fact that he is about as plugged-in as it is possible to get - without, that is, electrocuting yourself on all that high voltage cable knocking about over there - to mainsteam ECB thinking over on Kaiserstrasse, and also because he has been one of the most stalwart journalistic defenders of the idea that the German economy was finally - after many ...

by Edward Hugh : BarcelonaAccording to preliminary data from national statistics office ISTAT this morning Italy's GDP fell 0.3 percent in the second quarter compared with the first three months of the year and was unchanged year-on-year (ie zero percent annual growth). Final data and a detailed breakdown for the second quarter will be released on Sept. 10. In the first quarter, GDP rose 0.5 percent quarter-on-quarter and increased 0.3 percent year-on-year.European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet stated yesterday that economic growth was expected to be "particularly weak" in the third quarter after bank policy makers left borrowing costs at 4.25 percent, so it is not unreasonable to anticipate a second consecutive quarter of negative growth in Q3, and hence in all probability Italy is now in recession.Italian consumer ...

by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaSpanish house sales dropped sharply again in May for the fourth month running, official figures showed on Monday, and talk of price declines is now becoming much more general. House sales fell by 34 percent year-on-year in May and mortgage borrowing was down by 40.4 percent from a year earlier, according to the latest data from Spain's National Statistics Institute. The result is rather a shocker since many had obviously been clutching at straws following April's better-than-expected year on year decline in new mortgages of only 7.8%. Reality is, unfortunately, now starting to sink in.Sales of resale properties appear to be suffering the most, down 44% to 25,280, compared to the 21% fall (to 24,890) in the number of newly built properties sold by developers. This figure is misleading, however, as the INE’s figures are ...

by Claus Vistesen Copenhagen

A good relationship need not, at each and every moment in time, be characterised by passion and desire. In fact the relationships which best endure the relentless erosion of time are often those where mutual respect and acceptance of difference form the cornerstones. Although I am, I have to admit, by no means an expert on this topic I would imagine that some such rule of thumb is embedded at the heart of many a marriage councilors' cookbook of fundamentals. Every chain has its breaking point however, and it seems that the central bankers' hitherto passionate love affair with inflation targeting is beginning to suffer the unforgiving attrition of time as the chill winds of the global credit crunch and rising inflation start to make the going rougher. At least it is hard to avoid the impression that certain that as some of the key components

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