Technical debt by itself is a bad thing. It's just that, much as with actual debt, it's often worthwhile to accept a little bit of bad if you get a lot of good in exchange.

I was going to write that there's no reason you'd want financial debt qua financial debt, and that's sort of true but I realized that credit ratings complicate things. Sometimes an important part of what you're getting in exchange for the debt (and its repayment) is capacity for borrowing more when it first-order matters in the future, by way of establishing a reputation for being able to handle debt correctly.

Mapping this back to software seems interesting. I can't think of a parallel for credit reporting agencies, but it's certainly the case that a team might be more (or less) willing to take on technical debt to meet the schedule desired by a manager or a PM if there is a history of allowing them room to pay down the debt later (or failing to).