The job of a lender is to evaluate risk and price a loan accordingly. If there is risk you charge a higher interest rate. That way you still make money on a broad portfolio of loans even when there are a few defaults.
That's the job of a banker, supposedly. It's what they are supposed to be good at. If they are bad at their job, give loans to deadbeats (or countries that can't pay you back) you lose money, and probably shouldn't in the business of being a lender.
The lender is supposed to evaluate the risk and say no if the borrower is irresponsible, not complain later about the borrower being irresponsible.
Unless their job is to get the borrower in over their head so you can get stuff. As in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man." In that case you try to get governments to borrow, you even bribe the leaders of governments to borrow like crazy so you can later control whoever is then in charge. From "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man":
We are an elite group of men and women who utilize international financial organizations to foment conditions that make other nations subservient to the corporatocracy running our biggest corporations, our government, and our banks. Like our counterparts in the Mafia, EHMs provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure – electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks.
... Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest. If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia we demand our pound of flesh.
Former president Ronald Reagan, for example, said he was trying to run up the borrowing in order to force the government to cut back on things it does to make our lives better. He cut taxes, increased military spending, a strategy called "strategic deficits." (Google that.)
Later we had budget surpluses under Clinton. Then Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan complained that the government was paying off the debt too fast. Then "W" Bush cut taxes and doubled military spending and said it was "incredibly positive news" (Google that, too) that the government was going back into deficits because it would force spending cuts.
Strategic deficits. Done on purpose. Are Greece's lenders bad at their job? Or are they good at a different job?
Atrios earlier:
"You lend money at a risk premium. Borrowers pay that risk premium for a reason. That reason is that they might stop being able to pay. Then you eat the loan.
... The banksters are supposed to be genius financial intermediaries, properly pricing risk and making loans accordingly. It seems that they aren't very good at their jobs? I suppose it depends on whether that really is their job."
