[lisper]

> by creating money, and using it to buy bonds, you can push down the rate of interest. This has nothing to do with taxes

Of course it does. It's all just wealth redistribution. Lowering interest rates redistributes wealth from lenders to borrowers, i.e. from savers to debtors.

> By setting the Federal Funds rate at 6%, the government can make it profitable to sell this business

The government can do exactly the same thing with tax policy. The only difference is that tax policy is more flexible (because it has many degrees of freedom rather than just one) and hence more powerful. The power to control the money supply is a proper subset of the power to tax. You can't support the latter but not the former and remain logically consistent.