In fact it might be argued that the fiscal position of a number of countries has been increasingly vulnerable for quite some years. Perhaps what the crisis has done is to act as a catalyst to bring forward a set of pressures for long-term budgetary reform that were bound to emerge anyway.
This has placed some governments in a very difficult bind, since the heightened focus on sustainability has increased the pressure for fiscal consolidation at a time when aggregate demand remains weak. The “least-damage path” through the various competing concerns has become harder to tread.