Cooking the books?

The Greeks are having to open the books on the state of their economy.

They're in dire need of financial help, but the problem could be bigger than first envisioned.

The Greeks have a national statistics agency, similar to the Office of National Statistics in UK.

The NSSG should be independent. It isn't. It comes under the authority of the Greek Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Oops.

The EU has ongoing investigations into the problems with Greek fiscal statistics. Last year EuroStat reported

"In the 21 October notification, the Greek government deficit for 2008 was revised from 5.0% of GDP (the ratio reported by Greece, and published and validated by
Eurostat in April 2009) to 7.7% of GDP. At the same time, the Greek authorities also revised the planned deficit ratio for 2009 from 3.7% of GDP (the figure reported in spring) to 12.5% of GDP, reflecting a number of factors (the impact of the economic crisis, budgetary slippages in an electoral year and accounting decisions)*

A deficit of 3.7% of Greek GDP would be equivalent to 12.25 BILLION dollars.
A deficit of 12.5 % would be 43.75 BILLION dollars.

A big difference. Of course, there being a general election had nothing to do with massaging the figures.

*http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/COM_2010_REPORT_GREEK/EN/COM_2010_REPORT_GREEK-EN.PDF