Brazil in late 80s and Argentina in early 2000s default. Both spent a decade with no access to foreign debt whatsoever and prompted a massive crisis. In Argentina it let to the populist Kirschner govt.
Brazil is once again facing mounting debt due continuous budget deficit. This time the govt is pushing for austerity reforms that, if not approved, will lead once again to default. The govt approved ratings are abismal and populist candidates are expected to win next year's general election.
Defaulting worked pretty well for Iceland. It worked poorly for Brazil and Argentina.
Not defaulting worked extremely poorly for Greece.
It all depends on the particular circumstances of a country. If you're going to be building massive amounts of infrastructure, then yeah, you may want to consider not defaulting. On the other hand, if the foundations of your economy are sound, you may do well to default, and live with the credit rating hit.
No defaulting and instead trying to rough it out and pay off a crippling debt is massively more harmful for a country. Because they have to basically cut all services and investments into the economy, which causes GDP to contract heavily, which causes a huge decrease in taxes, which causes yet more cuts in government investment.
You get a Greece like deflationary spiral that basically totally destroys your economy, and any hope you ever had of paying off the debt.
> Plenty of countries have defaulted, and they can still borrow money.
They're shut off from [cheap] public markets though. So while your statement is technically correct, they are usually stuck with lenders of last resort, such as IMF or direct country-to-country loans, which generally come with pretty harsh terms.
The question is "what are the chances they will default (again?) within the time period of the loan?". That determines the interest rate and the change you will loan it to them.
If after the default, they are in a reasonable state, then yeah, people will lend them money, because there is a good chance they will make a big enough profit.
You WANT to be a lender which balances the risk with the rewards. You don't want one which just blanketly says no to something which has a low risk, which will make a lot of money because you are arse hurt about it.
Many of those lenders are pension fund managers, who are responsible for managing normal people's retirement funding. This is not a good thing for anyone.
And yeah, it does effect other lender-borrower relationships. It's all people, and people get nervous.