That is one part of why they are not as toxic as they seem - they will, most of them, never reach that 5X trillion point of settlement. Not being a player in these esoteric financial instruments leaves most of us with a loss to explain why not, but everyone I have spoken to on this with more knowledge than me says that's true.
The other part is that even when they will need to come to a settlement, most of them are NOT based on toxic sub-prime or otherwise foreclosing mortgages, and therefore even if they settle the underlying original asset values (discounted for risk in the algorithms calculating the swap) - mortgage and or insurance revenues quite frequently - will still hold true most frequently.
Of course if some people WANT to create a depression psychology, knowing that economic expectations share as much value in determining economic behavior as does an actual paycheck, bank account and distance between income and expenses, then if they can be successful in that process, it does not matter what the material values of the economy are, they'll get a depression.
Respectfully, that is why they are more toxic than they seem. Derivitives, credit default swaps,....whatever term the bankers use to deceive the public with.....are inocuous as long as their notional values remain notional. The danger comes quickly as a company defaults and makes a demand on the derivitive contract. Like Lehman's Bros. it happend literally in a matter of hours. This caused AIG (largest insurer in the world) to declare their inablility to live up to their agreement (default) to pay Lehmans. That caused the Federal REserve (think about that....the Federal Reserve went in and injected 85 billion dollars in AIG, 20 of which went to Paulsons buddies at Goldman, in order to stop the immediate cascade of failures on Sept 16. That began the meltdown. Now, where in the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 did Mr.Bernanke get authority to 'give' 85 billion to an insurance company? That is not in their charter. He did it anyway, and noone asked the question. Bernanke gave the money because he knew that Sept.16 would have been the date which the economy cascaded into what is referrd to as a meltdown.
The meltdown has been slowed only temporarily. The only way out for Mr.Bernanke is to monitize the debt. There is no other way, except to allow everything to decay to destruction. Sorry to sound so bleak, but it has already started and it cannot be stopped. All debts will be paid, mostly in the currency of pain and loss.