The hallmark of lazy journalism is hitting that address book, phoning the usual suspect, getting your de rigueur 'an expert sez' quote and filing your story. Feed da beast, boyz. Today's example is Bloomie's apparent love affair with Edwin Gutierrez, some dude who works for Aberdeen Asset Management and apparently manages a bonds AUM of $5.5Bn (though that's the same number that Bloomie has quoted all year, so methinks times maybe be slightly leaner right now). Plug his name into the Bloomberg search engine and you get 47 results back from 2007 and 2008. What's that, a phone call every two weeks on average? Not bad....Anyway, today Lester Pimentel (crazy name, crazy guy) got Edwin as saying the following about Ecuador's debt situation:
"I don't see Correa sacrificing social spending to pay foreigners....They will default -- it's a matter of time.''
Which is pretty damning from an expert, right? Well Otto has this nasty habit of being cynical about things he reads (esp at Bloomie), checking up on track records, bonafides and things like that. Is this really the same Edwin Gutierrez that said on July 9th
"(Ecuador) is one of my favorite picks. The fear of an unfriendly restructuring has faded."
Spookily, all reports were filed by Lester Pimentel...strange that, innit?
The bottom line: Any reason why we should trust the word of Gutierrez or his rent-a-quote vehicle Bloomberg this time around?