ATHENS — The warning was clear: Greece was spiraling out of control.

But the alarm, sounded in mid-2009, in a draft report from the International Monetary Fund, never reached the outside world.

Greek officials saw the draft and complained to the I.M.F. So the final report, while critical, played down the risks that Athens might one day default, an event that could have disastrous consequences for all of Europe.

What is so remarkable about this episode is that it was not so remarkable at all. The reversal at the I.M.F. was just one small piece of a broad pattern of denial that helped push Greece to the brink and now threatens to pull the euro apart. Politicians, policy makers, bankers — all underestimated dangers that seem clear enough in hindsight. Time and again over the past two years, many of those in charge offered solutions that, rather than fix the problems in Greece, simply let them fester.

Indeed, five months after the I.M.F. made that initial prognosis, Prime Minister George A. Papandreou of Greece disclosed that under the previous government, his country had essentially lied about the size of its deficit. The deficit, it turned out, amounted to an unsustainable 12 percent of the country’s annual economic output, not 6 percent, as the government had maintained.