Have you watched zeitgeist?
What happens is, the bank makes money, with the expectation that the government will pay it back with interest. The only reason the government would do this, is if they expect they would make money, from money... i.e. trading with other countries. However, our government spends more money than it makes (always). This means, that when the government takes money from the banks, and gives it to us, via trickling through the system, your paycheck, a loan, a credit card, etc... That money is actually OWED to the bank the government got it from. I.e. by you recieving a paycheck, and since the government is consistently in debt, that money is a representation of the governments debt.
Also, since the money is expected to be payed back as interest - that means there is always some part of the government that cannot be paying back the loans it takes from the bank. Since this is the case forever, since way back in the 1800's, there has always been excess debt, and since we get our money from the government only - that means that there will always be excess debt passed onto us, by loans. (This can be completely avoided however if no one ever takes out a loan, uses a credit card, etc...)
The government does do something nice though, it keeps itself in debt, rather than directly passing it onto us, that is why our deficit is something like 450 trillion or some ridiculous number like that. That means though - that our government will NEVER get out of debt, never. Because in order for the government to pay off that debt, it has to make money - that is through taxes, foreign trade, etc. But if all of that debt were transfered to the people of america, not only would we all be sitting on 100,000 dollars of debt, we would never be able to pay it off, because the money created to make the payments to pay off the debt would be in form of a debt to the bank which would only exasserbate the total debt of our system!
In other words, the ONLY way debt can be eliminated, is if no more loans or credit cards are used, and if another country were to go into debt, giving us a surplus of $.
IT just DOESN'T work.