Did you just quote a physics law when it comes to what is essentially monopoly money?

This article could have been written in 1995, or 1998, or 2000, or 2002, or 2004, or 2006.

I always ask one question whenever I read these "debt crisis" articles about Japan, US, UK etc.

How is it possible for a country to ever go bankrupt or face any crisis when it "owes" money in the same currency it alone has the power to issue? Japan, US, UK, etc can always "service" the debt no matter how high it gets. There is a theoretical limit to this when runaway inflation can take hold but none of these countries are even close to that point. Japan is going thru a deflationary period. The US/UK are FAR from operating at full capacity.

Yes, and it will go on forever. We benefit from this trade imbalance since we get tangible goods for paper money. The foreign nations sit on sterile cash they want a return on so they demand treasuries. This is why the "debt" is so high. The tradeoff is that by wanting cheaper items produced abroad we've killed our own manufacturing base since we cannot compete on a price basis.

If the markets controlled everything, why is Japan's borrowing rate so low relative to it's debt levels? Why are people tripping over themselves to lap up US and Japan debt? If the event horizon was looming, wouldn't the market be pricing that in? Especially since the doomsday predictions have been going on for 2 decades now?

At some point, empirical evidence has to trump theory and predictions.