The Greeks are not victims. Lots of people there don't pay taxes and at the same time lots of people have government jobs. This went on for decades. That doesn't work, whether it's the Greeks, the Germans, or the IMF in charge.
As someone else said, one's economy has to be in a shambles before the need for IMF loans comes up. If you run your economy and government well, you don't need the IMF.
The IMF is a convenient scapegoat for irresponsible governments that brought on economic crises. When those governments are democratically elected year in and year out before the crisis, the fault ultimately lies with the people of the country who want to take out more than they put into the economy.
Even if the people are not venal, and simply cannot compete in an open marketplace with foreign labor and goods and therefore must depend on their governments for employment in protected industries, they must know on some level that they are living on borrowed time. Hopefully that will focus the mind and spur some people on to gain more skills. Unfortunately this latter group more often than not emigrates to other countries.
However, again as others have pointed out, post-communist societies like in east Asia and eastern Europe that have retooled their economies after profound tragedy show that it is possible to dig yourself out of a hole and catch up to the countries that never embraced collectivism. If the Chinese can rise from the ashes of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution and within two generations challenge the USA for economic supremacy, what is holding Greece and Portugal back, where things never got so bad?