A day after Standard and Poor's slashed the debt rating on Greek bonds to junk status, Zeus held a press conference in which he admitted that things were getting out of hand under the rule of his son, Hermes.
Hermes is popularly known as the messenger god with the winged hat, but he is also the god of thieves. He holds the record as youngest felon in history, thanks to his remarkable heist of a herd of sacred cattle from elder sibling Apollo mere hours after he was born.
"We've been taking turns at the helm, you see; all part of this family counseling we've been going through," Zeus said while toying with a small lightning bolt in his left hand.
"Things were pretty good under Hephaestus," Zeus said, "got the country through the beginning of the Industrial Age quite nicely there. And Athena did all right in establishing national autonomy back in the 1830s. But Hermes... Hermes is another story entirely. I'm still not sure why I agreed to this in the first place."
Hermes, whose divine guidance is currently emanating from an undisclosed but extremely luxurious location, has insisted that everything is fine, really, and that he has a sure-fire plan to turn things around if people could only provide him with their bank account and social security numbers.
With most of the more competent Olympians either ineligible for a rotation in the driver's seat or otherwise unavailable - Athena emigrated to the United States nearly a century ago, and Hera has been on vacation since 1982 - Zeus is rapidly running out of options to deal with the fiscal legacy of his wayward son.
"Maybe it's time to give Dionysius a turn," mused the divine patriarch. "If ever the country needed to start drinking heavily, it's now."
(complete text in http://www.watleyreview.com/2010/042710-1.html)
