I very much doubt that Bitcoin was created by any government. Having said that, one reason why government could be interested in fomenting Bitcoin is because it makes some forms of tax evasion nearly impossible. I've written to some length on this often neglected side of Bitcoin; see the section "On the upside: Bitcoin is transparency friendly" in the following blog post:
http://nleyten.com/post/2012/10/24/Announcing-OCaml-bitcoin-...