But that's only the case when you're fiscally responsible most of the time, which some countries are, but it's fair to say that manycountries aren't.

If you're under a lot of stress, one of the ways you can deal with that stress is by eating more; it can give you the energy you need to deal with problems, and make you feel better while you're at it. But if you're 350 pounds, and you tell your doctor "no, I need to eat a lot so I have the energy to deal with my stress!", he will tell you "no, you need to lose some goddamned weight or it will cause much worse problems."

If your country has a low or even a moderate level of debt, putting on a little extra to deal with a downturn makes a lot of sense. It gives you some extra money to deal with the additional demands on your safety net and can help you create the conditions to turn things around. But once you get past a certain point, you can't borrow your way out of the hole; the returns you can get off additional government spending don't have much hope of reaching the level of the interest you had to spend to get 'em.

That's where Greece is now. Yeah, life would be easier if they could spend some extra money - but if they run out the patience of the various creditor countries which are the only ones making the current "austerity" possible, then the loan guarantees will disappear, the bond market will respond to Greek bond offers with a "lol yeah right" (again), and the fallout from the Grexit will -massively- damage the Greek economy. The various creditor countries have a big incentive to make sure that, if Greece does drop out, that the process is as nasty and damaging as possible, so that the rest of the PIIGS countries are deterred from going down the same political path.

Greece's problem is that it's very easy to run against sober and well-advised financial administration - "a chicken in every pot and fuck the Krauts" is a popular slogan. Of course those same voters will be the ones with torches and pitchforks when their life savings are forcibly converted to a new Greek currency that's immediately inflated to hell and back!