Linkbait headline. Without context, these figures mean nothing.
You can see the debt-to-GDP ratios here:
You can see the debt-to-GDP ratios here:
> Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), said that interest payments on the debt are expected to exceed $1 trillion this year, and will surpass $2 trillion by 2036.
That’s very concerning. There’s no plan to run balanced budgets and stop deficits. And no plan to reduce debt. And no plan on economic competitiveness against China. American politics is mostly dominated by irrelevant things that won’t fix the fundamental problems that will come to affect us in the future.
The article seems to be communicating that this rate of spending is not sustainable.
https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/11792/what-lev...
Not to say that it's okay, and Japan's economy certainly has issues with stagnation due to the debt load, but it's also not a "we have imminent hyperinflation" kind of thing either.
The concern with the past five months isn't so much the level of debt, it's the rate of change - we're increasing it faster than in the past... and this isn't a COVID-level crisis or a 2008-style deep recession either where Keynesian logic might make more sense.
Japan borrows on 0.75% interest rate compared to current US's 3.5%.
Citations:
https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/government-bond-yield
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/business/jgb-trade-excite...
https://www.axios.com/2026/01/26/japan-bond-market-dollar-ye...
https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/2026012067/japa...
https://robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/how-japan-can-escape-its...
> Economists aren’t necessarily worried by the total level of debt (in fact, government debt is a necessary foundation of global markets). Rather it’s the debt-to-GDP ratio, which measures a nation’s borrowing against its growth