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The stats I can find suggest Greece ran a primary deficit pretty consistently starting in 2002 --- long before the crisis --- in fact, they appear to have run a primary deficit during the boom years that preceded the crisis.

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A deficit isn't necessarily unsustainable over a period of economic growth. If growth and inflation outpace the cost of borrowing, it's worthwhile to borrow. Kind of like the US is doing right now.

That's a good point, but the obvious next Google search suggests that Greece's economic growth was unspectacular during the early 00s, and began lagging in '06.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/gdp

Greece's GDP nearly tripled from 2000 to 2008. Their debt to GDP was comparable to other European nations until 2008 (105% of GDP).

And we're treating those figures as trustworthy are we? Eurostar consistently failed to validate numbers provided by the Greek government in that period.

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