Reply #9: That figure is insanely wrong

[Yo_Mama]

It's not even in the ballpark. Maybe they are adding in all the public land values and a whole bunch of other stuff, but the net worth of American households (who ultimately own the corporations) is currently at 58.5 trillion.

The government has assets, but it also has huge liabilities.

This is Flow of Funds for September (the latest). You can read that stat on household net wealth on the first page:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/Current/z1.pdf

Current US federal government debt held by the public is 10.3 trillion (almost).

Future accrued liabilities include federal retirements and SS and Medicare and so forth, and in total with Debt Held By The Public add up to close to 15 trillion. Add in wealth held by non-profits (although are we really going to raid the local museum, university and charity hospital to settle our debts?) and we get to 58.3 trillion (see internal page 106 of the link).

But then you subtract more than 62 trillion, minus federal debt and state and local debt. State and local debt net of assets is about 450 billion.

So yes, unfunded and accrued liabilities in excess of 30 trillion no matter how you look at it do pose a problem.

I can hardly believe that anyone is credulous enough to believe the number cited in the OP.