Washington, DC—In a conference call with President Obama, Speaker John Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Greek President Karolos Papoulias insisted that sequestration wasn't all that bad.  

Papoulias, whose government has seen four Prime Ministers and two government collapses in the past 12 months, explained that slashing a trillion dollars from defense and social spending “wasn’t a big deal”. Greece’s EU-imposed austerity measures have forced it to enact similar policies, and Papoulias told American leaders that the whole experience had been “fun”.

“I was as worried as anyone when we were forced to fire thousands of government workers and dismantle the social safety net,” Papoulias mused, “but the riots and strikes that have spread across the country are rather exciting.” Papoulias added that he had discovered some of life’s little pleasures, like the sight of police cars torched by Molotov cocktails, or the way the Parthenon looks when shrouded in smoke. “Go ahead and try to stop it,” the Greek President concluded “but if there’s one thing you can learn from my country, it’s that the debt crisis won’t mean the end of the world.  In fact, I'd say it's brought us all closer together.”