Stocks of Greek puns have seen a phenomenal rise this past week. As bankers and government officials squabble over the minor details of Greek debt, its refinancing and its effect on the price of moussaka, headline writers have been buying up dormant puns. 'Greece is the word' only works for the nostalgia buffs, but when 'Grecian Earns' came to the market the groans and public shaking of the head could be felt on the floor of the stock exchange.
"Greek headlines have woefully underperformed until recently," laments Papandreou Aristophanes, editor of The Watermelon, a Greek satirical magazine,"but Greece is such an obvious homophone that writers could not resist slipping in those sad puns."
"we have not lost our marbles!" Exclaims an unapologetic journalist (who wished to remain anonymous). "We know the market is awash with sub-pun headlines, but we have a reputation to uphold and a triple-A rating to maintain."
"This is the typical behaviour of banksters manipulating our pun market. They pump and dump these lame phrases leaving the hapless reader stranded with bland financial headlines and worthless old newspapers." The old geezers agreed with their comrade and demanded another bottle of Ouzo for the quote.
"The government is considering austerity measures such as trimming the font size of headlines." The Finance Minister, George Georgiou confided. "The ECB seems to be angry with me, but what can I do? I never read the financial press as it's all Greek to me!"
Politicians across Europe are worried about a domino effect kicking in and are holding secret meetings to establish if their own country could be under attack. They fear that bad puns destroy public confidence in the very existence of their governments. Those most at risk may take the drastic measure of changing their country's name to something less toxic.
A senior British comedian let slip that,"We are looking seriously at the feasibility of renaming the island of St Kitts as 'Great Britain' and giving them all our sub-pun debts whilst at the same time calling ourselves 'Little Britain'." The markets remained po-faced at the revelation.
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