ATHENS – In a move to tackle uncontrolled levels of national spending, The EU has decided to ban Greece from making purchases through Amazon’s 1-Click ordering.
The move – made in the face Greece’s staggering debt – will force the country to review purchases thoroughly before committing to buying.
Leading economists backed the decision to cut Greece off from Amazon’s expedited ordering system which they had ‘absolutely abused’ while unknowingly racking up unnecessary purchases thought to be worth at least €100 billion.
‘We got carried away’
The European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF are due in Athens this week to review Greece’s order history.
“Greece has shown itself incapable of handling the responsibility that comes with 1-Click shopping,” blasted European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso.
Mr Barroso confirmed Greece will now be restricted to the standard method of ordering so that it would be forced to stop and think “before ordering a dinner plate set it was only going to smash up anyway.”
Showing disgust for a lack of self-control, he continued: “We have all suffered lapses in judgement when we get excited and buy that Britney Spears album when we should know better…but Greece has taken it too far and as a direct result of their compulsive shopping came very close to collapsing the Euro.”
Greece initially requested that Germany underwrites the items still on its wishlist – a request immediately denied by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Prime Minister George Papandreou admitted there was a serious problem and said the current debt crisis provided stark waning of the dangers of a system that allowed you to make purchases in less time than it takes to say ‘Papandreou’.
“It’s so easy to lose control,” he confessed. “You see something you like and before you know it, the package is on its way. We don’t even see the shopping basket…we never had a chance.”
Way too convenient
He added that in retrospect they didn’t need to buy the entire DVD collection of Friends, “but when it’s just a click away there’s no time to think these things through.”
Mr Papandreou was later heard screaming “It’s just too damn easy!”
Italy PM Silvio Berlusconi did offer some sympathy, saying he understood how difficult it was to resist the allure of instant gratification but Greece “seriously needed to control itself in the face of such temptations.”
With 1-Click purchases denied, analysts expect the country to see a budget surplus by 2012.
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