re: Why is it assumed that the federal government is not greedy?

The government is made up of people. So it's no more or less greedy than the average person, just full of people who can work the system to their advantage. As long as Capitalism is our system, there's going to be governemnt corruption and cronyism.

The bigger problem with government is large organizations are inherently inefficient. The Federal Government is just happens to be the biggest organization in the game.