I admit that I have not done a good job of explaining what I'm driving at here, but payment shock is neither an obscure nor unhelpful concept in consumer financ

I admit that I have not done a good job of explaining what I'm driving at here, but payment shock is neither an obscure nor unhelpful concept in consumer finance. If you suddenly take on a very large, new payment, that creditor will want to see some separate evidence that you can make said payment. An income statement is one such piece of evidence, but obviously Twitter can't use that since they weren't earning enough to make the payments before. Obviously corporate finance is a very different world. Musk was obviously able to demonstrate to his new creditors' satisfaction that Twitter will be able to make these payments (I don't see evidence of an ulterior motive here). It's still a real concept. Not conclusive on its own, but it is a signal among many.