So, since they were fudging numbers, I can't really say that it's a total shock that the deficit went from 100% to 120% in that period.
I assumed that things were much worse (in terms of the level of deception). I realize now that the deception is actually the level of deficit in the annual budget, but total budget should be a much bigger concern than annual budget. I believe they jumped from 7% to 12.7% in the annual budget, and that's where the anger arose. A 6% annual revision adds about 15 billion euros to the federal deficit, so 15 billion would be the level of deception.
Something is really really funky in all the numbers. You can't simply add the new debt from 2009 to the previous debt from 2008 to get to the current debt level. Either the degree of trouble for Greece was obvious in plain sight in previous reporting, or the current numbers that we're working with now are off. There's definitely something wrong there.
1997 96.6 1998 94.5 -2.1 1999 94.0 -0.5 2000 103.4 +9.4 2001 103.7 +0.3 2002 101.7 -2.0 2003 97.4 -4.3 2004 98.6 +1.2 2005 100.0 +1.4 2006 97.1 -2.9 2007 95.6 -1.5 2008 99.2 +3.6
So, the numbers are funky.
I really will give up on this. I think what happens is as warren Buffet said, "When the tied goes out, we see who is swimming naked." 100% debt to GDP is ok when your economy is growing. When times get tough, it's a scandal.
