Hui Ka Yan Gets Life as Debt Tops $40 Trillion and Yields Keep Climbing

Evergrande's Hui Ka Yan drew a life sentence overnight, the formal end to a property collapse that dragged Chinese growth down for three years. The number that decides how this reads is the one beside it: US federal debt crossed $40 trillion, and long bond yields kept climbing even after Treasury Secretary Bessent's intervention, per the FT. A private banker in Hong Kong now has two bad debt stories on one screen. Beijing has already written its off. Washington is still accumulating. This week's bond selloff shows investors treating the second one as the bigger risk. Walmart's slowest sales growth in six years adds the consumer leg: the US household is absorbing tariff costs, not the balance sheet Washington claims. On the security desk, SilkParasite's AI-assisted malware campaign against Central Asian governments is the first China-linked operation this column has flagged using AI tooling for target reconnaissance rather than just payload generation. Any CISO running threat models built on last year's tradecraft should take a second look. Iran and the US remain in the standoff the New York Times calls a game of who blinks first, no ceasefire, no fresh strikes. Whether the $40 trillion mark forces a rate move that reprices Asian carry trades before Monday's open will hold attention into evening.