A little deceptive that article me thinks. Debt is paid off over time and not right now. So you need to factor in the future earnings of US citizens & corporations to service that $56tril debt. Just because a individual & corpration has very little money in the bank now doesn't mean that they can't pay it off in the future.
The other factor with money is that it is being devalued over time and wages are increasing, so a large debt now will be a small debt in 20years.
The derivatives payout values, if they occur, I believe are on the order of 1% of the notional value. So their real value is like between 6-15trillion.
