Marc-Andre Lemburg discovered that the switch from .pyc to .pyo files,

done by _PyImport_Init(), comes to late to affect the import of
exceptions.py by _PyBuiltin_Init_2().  Move  _PyImport_Init() up few lines.

Python/pythonrun.c

@@ -149,12 +149,12 @@ Py_Initialize()
 	PyDict_SetItemString(interp->sysdict, "modules",
 			     interp->modules);
 
+	_PyImport_Init();
+
 	/* phase 2 of builtins */
 	_PyBuiltin_Init_2(interp->builtins);
 	_PyImport_FixupExtension("__builtin__", "__builtin__");
 
-	_PyImport_Init();
-
 	initsigs(); /* Signal handling stuff, including initintr() */
 
 	initmain(); /* Module __main__ */