Leverage agaisnt hard assets != leverage agaisnt equity (which you were talking about), and we're talking about individual companies P/E. Everyone cannot hold an index (if everyone does so, there is no incentive to weed out bad companies), some of which are good about not including neg eps companies in the P/E caluclation [0].
[0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-the-shocking-truth-a...