The Greeks may well have lied about their debts and deficits, as is alleged, but as we shall see in chapter 3, the Greeks are the exception, not the rule. What actually happened in Europe was that over the decade of the introduction of the euro, very large core-country European banks bought lots of peripheral sovereign debt (which is now worth much less) and levered up (reduced their equity and increased their debt to make more profits) far more than their American cousins.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 37