It's not that simple. If you lend me money and I don't repay, the open market allows you to recover some of it by selling the debt to someone else. However, if

It's not that simple. If you lend me money and I don't repay, the open market allows you to recover some of it by selling the debt to someone else. However, if there was no hope of getting the money back there would have been no buyer. So if it wasn't for the evil hedge fund willing to shoulder the risk, the people/organizations who actually did lent Argentina the money would have been a lot worse off (being unable to sell the bonds).