That isn't really how it works. Governments can issue revenue bonds, infrastructure bonds, or some type of unsecured debt. Keep in mind this isn't the Greek taxpayer, they Hoover up the freebies and think everyone else should give them charity. This is the rest of Europe, and mostly Germans. The Greeks don't have much revenue, so they haven't been able to issue much of those (like a cash til payday loan), they can't afford the double/triple digit interest on unsecured debt that everyone knew would be defaulted on, so they were issuing infrastructure bonds. They don't build anything either there, so they pledged old stuff. Don't pay your bills and the bank takes the collateral... Shocker...

So the EU steps in and basically floats German and French debt at lower interest rates to borrow to Greece. Now the German and French are paying the bill, and the Greeks were supposed to cut spending and raise taxes (much lower than the Germans or French pay) to pay the bills for Germany/France at their lower 'affordable' interest rates of about 1% or so. The Greeks were at like 20%... So risk was baked in and bond holders were just going to take their stuff like the Rent A Center ghetto deadbeats that they are. Truthfully, the banks taking over Greek-run 'businesses', firing the lazy staff, and hiring some non-Greeks to actually work and then sell the business would be the best thing to ever happen to them.

So now the Germans and French are holding the bag, the Greeks did none of they changes they committed to as loan conditions, they have no money again, and defaulted on the first payment and now need a loan to pay their loan interest with.
Let's compare, the U.S. Is a debtor country, we used to be a creditor, we have a $60 Trillion+ annual GDP. We owe around 28% of that (it doubled under O-Bummer).

Greece owes 170% of its GDP! And something like 700%+ the governments annual take-in, and they keep spending.

This stuff they committed to isn't feeding dog food to Grandma, it's selling government enterprises off to raise money to pay their debts off with and get rid of future civil service retirement costs, sell off buildings they don't need to run the government, raise retirements to something like everyone else in Europe, and pay debts first like anyone with a mortgage does.

It's called tough love be, and you stop enabling the junkie. Iceland was there, took about 5 years to turn it around. Half of Greece works for the government..l that's the first problem and like any public employee union-dominated election here, they only elect leaders that will keep giving away more free stuff.

I think everyone knows they need relief, but they can't have a penny of it without changing first.