Is the country as a whole really this immature? It depends whom you ask. The Greek perspective looks a bit different.

First, as Lewis notes, and as those close to the Greek government are even quicker to point out, the current government led by Prime Minister George Papandreou really isn't at fault. In fact, officials in the new government, which assumed office in late 2009, were the ones who discovered the mess left by predecessors and decided to come clean.

Papandreou's whole platform during his campaign was "vigorous reform of the public sector," Richard Parker, personal adviser to the prime minister on economics, told me. "He [Papandreou] was basically blindsided by the size of the government deficits, but I think actually thought in some sense it was a blessing in disguised because it would help drive forward the reform agenda."

Parker argued that the Greek government has been "aggressive" in addressing financial problems. "They knocked down their deficit-to-GDP ratio by six percentage points of GDP in 2010," he said. "No other country in the midst of this recession has gotten that sized reduction out of government," and "they're not getting many points on the board for it." Parker acknowledged, however, that he's pretty close to the government's process.

It may be the very dynamism of the government's response, though, that is driving Greek society to such anger.

"If a person hasn't lost their job or had their pension cut, then one of their family members has--or more accurately several family members and friends have," one anthropologist doing field work in modern Greek political culture wrote me in an email.

"Everyone I've talked to understands that tax evasion, for example, has contributed to the situation," he adds. "But these individuals also realize that the economic crash isn't one-dimensional, simple, or isolated to Greece." Furthermore, "many of the people I've spoken with don't see how their country can ever pay back the bailout money," and thus believe that "this is all a waste of time and that the people are being made to suffer needlessly since Greece will, sooner or later, having received the bailouts or not, default."

Parker agreed. The cuts "could take a fifth of the public sector workforce out," he said, "so you can understand why they'd be upset." From a macro perspective, though, is that expectation that they be saved today so everyone can sink tomorrow really fair? "These people are being asked to bear an enormous burden," Parker responded. "There's a way in which financial crises start far away but then come to tear down your house and your neighbor's house when in fact you weren't doing anything that was related."

Tax evasion would be qualify as "related," presumably, but Parker said he doesn't think the evasion has been as widespread as Michael Lewis has argued. And, he points out, the taxes were pretty high to begin with.