Goldilocks inhaled the sea breeze as the Queen Mary 2 sailed out of Hamburg harbour and headed for New York. She'd departed her Frankfurt home the day before, leaving a perfumed note on the pillow for European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet. "Au revoir," was all she wrote.

Sailing meant she could avoid those horrendous flight delays caused by the volcanic ash spewing out of Iceland or Greece or Spain or whichever bankrupt country was currently causing chaos. She'd given up trying to keep track. All she knew was there were a darn sight more than three bears waiting to turn the euro into porridge, and she couldn't stand the thought of being Trichet's shoulder to sob on while his beloved common-currency project crumbled.

It was time for a change, and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke had been very persuasive in promising to raise interest rates any day now. He wasn't the least bit jealous about her previous dalliance with Alan Greenspan, though Bernanke looked a bit peeved when she told him about the seven years she'd spent in the UK with Mervyn King before shacking up with Trichet.

What a disappointment he was. Her pseudo-Teutonic superman had turned out to be as soft as Camembert at the first sign of trouble, no matter how sexy that accent was.

One day he claimed he hadn't discussed buying government bonds, only to announce the very next weekend that he would be blowing his savings trying to fight off the bond vigilantes and suppress debt yields. Goldilocks was sure either German Chancellor Angela Merkel or French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde had seduced him into being unfaithful to his principles. At least Bundesbank President Axel Weber had taken him to task, highlighting the "significant" risks of the policy shift. (Weber had cornered her at a recent party, whispering sweet nothings about yield curves, fiscal responsibility and unyielding opposition to political interference, all music to her pretty little ears. He was VERY attractive, a properly hard central banker. Maybe, she said to herself, one day, once Weber finally had the top job.)

Trichet couldn't even get quantitative easing right, insisting on draining the funds spent on bonds back out of the market. Goldilocks could hear her biological clock ticking louder every time he referred to sterilisation.

Instead of demanding that Greece be kicked out of the euro, Trichet had gone along with the whole misguided bailout package, even letting those third-rate bean counters from the International Monetary Fund get involved. And he'd had the cheek to lay the foundation stone for a shiny new headquarters in Frankfurt when he hadn't even taken her dancing in the basement nightclub of the current ECB building.

He'd even stayed silent when Merkel slapped that misguided ban on short selling. If there was one thing Goldilocks demanded of her paramours, it was that they be completely comfortable with nakedness, be it in the bedroom, the kitchen or the sovereign credit-default swaps market. Such issues were the mainstay of free markets and free living, in her book.

She was terminally bored with living in Frankfurt. She was tired of sipping Ebbelwoi cider, which stayed sour no matter how much lemonade you diluted it with. She longed to go shopping on a Sunday — rarely possible in Germany, but positively encouraged in the US. And the prospect of yet more belt tightening and austerity measures meant beds across the euro region would be too hard to sleep in comfortably for the foreseeable future.

And then there were the hours he spent grooming his hair, bathroom shelves groaning under the weight of bottles of Head & Shoulders shampoo and L'Oreal conditioner. Goldilocks suspected her French beau had even been helping himself to her hairspray. There wasn't room in her household for two coiffure obsessions.

No, a move to Washington to spend time with Bernanke's shining pate was a much more attractive choice in the current economic climate. And then there was his beard.

"I bet it's wonderfully ticklish," Goldilocks giggled to herself as she headed to Deck 3 and the delights of the Veuve Clicquot champagne bar.

Mark Gilbert, author of "Complicit: How Greed and Collusion Made the Credit Crisis Unstoppable," is the London bureau chief and a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.