so later today, prmpresident obama preets with the prime minister of greece who's in the midst of a major financial crisis. one who's ripple effect could be felt around europe and beyond. >> with us now, our expert, cnbc's steve liesman and cnbc's chief washington correspondent, john harwood, also with "the new york times." steve, i'm going to put it to you first, before we even start on this topic. can you just explain it for all of us who may be haven't been following every little wrinkle in the debt crisis issue, what's been going on with greece? >> okay. so they spent way more than they had, they ran huge budget deficits. and fundamentally, the bond market lost faith in the ability of greece to repay and they started demanding much higher interest rates to roll over or to recycle the debt. and that was hurting greece's ability to repay the debt. so it became a vicious cycle on the downside. we also found out, not only were their deficits really high, but much higher than we thought