it harps incessantly on debt, throwing out scary, big numbers ($250T! $40T in china!) but doesn't explain why increasing government debt is an issue
there is a reason to worry if the interest rate on the government debt is larger than the growth rate of the economy
currently that average interest rate is below 3 percent [1], so for any countries with >3% economic growth, it really doesn't matter - they'll be able to make their interest payments to one another (most big holders of gov debt are other govs themselves)
financial and household debt is down across developed economies, and corporate debt is about the same as it was in 2008
furthermore there is no discussion of what could trigger a debt collection death spiral/meltdown, other than "the world's second largest economy is now coming to terms with rising corporate defaults", backed up by 0 context or data
the real worry would be continued slowdown in GDP growth ala "secular stagnation" that many prominent economists are exploring - if you're not growing your income, you can't pay down your debt, and you have to start cutting costs (healthcare, education, defense)
debt has a bad connotation and is easy to sensationalize, so articles like this get attention, but there's no news, argument, or takeaway to be had from reading it
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/opinion/on-the-debt-non-s...