Long or Short Capital

Greece

Previous Rating Greece: BFFAE (Best Friends Forever and Ever)
New Rating Greece: Whore

Ratings Rationale: Just when you think you found the one, you realize that the one is not…the one. He was so hot. A beautiful specimen. OMG, he was a god, a Greek God, an actual Greek God. He went by Helios. I wanted to prove my independence after I graduated college, so I drew down on my parents’ savings to finance a 6 week back-packing trip across Europe’s five star hotels in such exotic places as the Riviera, Croatia, Cinque Terre (too cute for words), and lastly, and amazingly, Mykonos.

This is where I met him, my Helios, the perfect man. He had long dark hair, Helios did, and so much charisma. He showed me around town, me with arms wrapped around his waist as he steered his scooter along sea roads. He lavished me with drinks, booked us in a lovely little hotel where our room had a balcony that looked out on the water. And in bed, let’s just say my world was his oyster. Or maybe his oyster was my world? I’m really bad at metaphors like he was really good in bed. No austerity anywhere to be seen.

But one morning I woke up and he was gone. He had retired to some location unknown, maybe to put in some face time at the “job” which he’d mentioned once in passing but which he never seemed to have to go to — not unlike how the married men I’ve slept act towards their families. In his place on the bed was one thing: the bill. He was asking me to finance his romancing of…me! He’d LITERALLY left me with the bill! I felt used, betrayed, like our entire relationship — his trade of money and time and hotness for my trade of young, female and American attentions — was for naught. So frustrating!

When he came back, after spending two hours at his “job,” a glass of ouzo in one hand, I confronted him, waving the bill in his face. He said some stuff in Greek to me. I stared back blanky. It was actual Greek. 10 years of boarding school and I only knew classical Greek. Then, in his bedeviling broken English, he said: “Look, toots, we both got something out of this, so let’s drop the naive kitten act and start calling a spade a spade. What we had was swell, baby, while it lasted. But I’m no Croesus, baby. You’re American, so you’re probably not cultured enough to know who he is, but Croesus had real money, mega bucks, baby. But me, I don’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out. I just have an unfinished (for tax purposes) condo in Athens, a vacation home in Mykonos, an investment property in Turkish Cyprus, and an 8 hour per week job that pays peanuts, only €150,000 per year under the table. So, see, I can’t handle the bills for our little fling, these threads, or even these digs.”

I had never noticed that his bedeviling broken English took all its euphemisms and structure from 1940’s B movies. I looked him in those rich chestnut eyes. “This has to stop now, Helios. I can’t afford to continue to subsidize us. Either you leave this union, or pay me back.”

“Ok, it’s going to be ok, baby. We’ll work something out, you can bank on it. Just give it a little time, a few more days, or months, or years, or decades. I’ll put up some of my assets. Maybe my yacht or this little island I own. The whole kit and caboodle. But before I do that, why don’t you and me and a bottle of ouzo go for a weekend in Athens. We’ll take in the sights, we’ll see the people, I’ll take you for a spin, a real wild time, kitten.”

2 years of daily back and forth and amazing moments — moments even better than my JYA — later I came to my senses. Melissa Moody realized Helios wasn’t going to pay her back. He was my Greek God and he was great. But he was an irresponsible debtor, with no interest in austerity and less interest in repaying debt. He could, maybe, but he wouldn’t. And my parents are super rich relative to what money of mine he spent, so it didn’t really represent any systemic Moody family threat; we just wrote it off. But it was the principle of the thing, and I’d say it set a really bad precedent for my other more expensive long-term flings with Joao, Donal, and Sergio.

Ratings Methodology:
Hey everyone! It’s me, Melissa Moody…not that other Moody, Moody’s, you have been reading about. Actually that’s why I’m here I’m just so sick and tired of that other Moody! Their ratings stink, and they don’t know nearly as much as I do about debt, it’s true, I’m maxed out on 4 out of 7 credit cards I know I have a problem but I just can’t stop,ha ha. I can do a better job than Moody’s and that is what I’m gonna do! And let’s face it, their old ratings were too complicated. I mean Aa3, Baa1, Caa2, B1 who knows what that means? My ratings will be simple:

• BFFAE (Best Friends Forever and Ever)
• BFF
• BFFLAF (Best Friends For Like Almost Forever)
• BFFBAS (Best Friends Forever But Also a Slut)
• BFFBIHH (Best Friends Forever But I Hate Her)
• Whore