Even in that article, the logic is that of favoring the "soft landing" and avoiding (mentioning) a crash,

In the US, most business publications, WSJ for example, have been debating the soft landing versus crash discussion for the last six months.  It certainly is not an underplayed issue.  Of course where you can really see what people think, is how they invest their money, and investors have been betting the last several months on a soft landing, and you can see that in the trends in the US stock markets since August.  Of course as new data comes in, people adjust their bets.  Personally I've been betting on a soft landing for more than a year now,,,,though continually reviewing the data.