I think the whole lie story is a canard to the extent it lets the banks and other politicians off the hook.

"They were lying! We would have never loaned them money!!"

Yes, the conservative gov't lied--but we're talking about projections of a yearly budget deficit here during a time of severe economic downturn. Even current Greek projections have been off by a magnitude of 4% yearly budget deficit. And indeed, Greek projections were off for every single year of the decade before being audited and reported correctly at the end of the year.

If you look at Greece's debt to GDP throughout the decade, you don't see it rising because of lying. It was 100-105% throughout the decade and then ended up at 115% after 2008.