We obtain the rate of growth of long strange segments and the rate of decay of infinite horizon ruin probabilities for a class of infinite moving average processes with exponentially light tails. The rates are computed explicitly. We show that the rates are very similar to those of an i.i.d. process as long as moving average coefficients decay fast enough. If they
do not, then the rates are significantly different. This demonstrates the change in the length of memory in a moving average process associated with certain changes in the rate of decay of the coefficients.