Ecuador president pleased with fate of Wall Street 'yuppies'

[Judi Lynn]

Ecuador president pleased with fate of Wall Street 'yuppies'
Correa says country analysts know little about countries they cover; 'unbearable'

October 29, 2008 7:35 AM ET

(Reuters)—Leftist Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa welcomed Wall Street investment analysts losing jobs in the financial crisis, calling them lazy yuppies who criticized governments without doing research.

“One of the few good things to come out of this crisis is that we don’t have to put up with those yuppies of Lehman Brothers, Standard & Poor’s and J.P. Morgan,” the ex-economy minister said on Tuesday.

“When I was minister, it was unbearable to have a line of those kids asking for an appointment so that I could do their job. They’d ask you for your analysis and then present it in a report as if were their own,” he added as he hosted fellow South American socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

After years of being criticized by Wall St. analysts for avoiding some free-market policies, leftists in Latin America have crowed in recent weeks about the implosion of financial companies in a worldwide crisis that is bleeding jobs.

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