Greece at fault? Or was there something else going on in international finance?

Yorgos Karahalis/Reuters — Shipyard workers protest in Athens. The decision about whether Greece defaulted on its debt was made by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association.

Behind Credit Default Swaps Market, a Cartel Left Open to Collusion 

By JESSE EISINGER, ProPublica

The rate-manipulation scandal has demonstrated that banks will collude with one another for their own benefit.

Banks didn’t report the rate at which they were borrowing from other institutions. They could report a made-up rate that, not surprisingly, turned out to serve their economic interests at the time.

So, it might come as a worry that there is another, multitrillion-dollar market — the credit-default swap market — that operates under a similar principle.

Credit-default swaps are insurancelike derivatives, or side bets, that protect investors from bad events like a company going bankrupt or a country failing to pay its debts.

(More here.)