The markets are up, slightly….and the investors are happy…..if investors are happy then the markets remain happy and rising…but all that good news is overshadowed, at least in my opinion, but a few things happening behind the scenes…it will effect the taxpayer and not in a good way.

First good ol’ Ben of the Fed is saying, according to Wall Street Journal:

Bernanke acknowledged that “financial conditions remain stressed, and many households and businesses are finding credit difficult to obtain.” In response to a question about the prospects for a jobs recovery, he said, “We have a very long haul here. Unemployment is going to stay high for quite a while, and so it’s not going to feel really like a strong economy.”

However, he called a second economic stimulus package “premature” and proposed no measures either to provide immediate relief for the millions hit by plant closures, layoffs, and the collapse of home values and savings, or to allocate government funds to create new jobs. Nor did he propose any measures to compel the banks, which have received more than $200 billion in taxpayer cash and trillions more in low-interest loans, subsidies and government backing for their debt, to increase their lending and make credit available to working families.

At the same time, Bernanke made clear that the Fed would continue to allocate whatever funds were needed to prop up the banks. In response to the plea from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, Democrat from Connecticut, Bernanke said he was prepared to extend one bailout program, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), beyond its December 31 expiration date.

Okay, the possibility of more taxpayer money being thrown at the markets, the banks and the wealthy is there….what exactly ius the government doing for the taxpayer?  The answer is simple…they are doing the same thing that Repubs do for the working class….as little as possible and still keep some support for the next election.

There is more for the workers to consider….do you recall the name John Yoo?  Well, he is up to his butt in legal probs brought on while he served in the Bush Admin.

By pulling out of Yoo’s defense, the Justice Department has now spared itself from having to defend Yoo’s expansive and much-criticized views of executive power, which would have been an embarrassment to the Obama administration.  And as Carrie Johnson of The Washington Post notes, it also frees Yoo to point the finger at other former government officials he might say were giving him orders — notably Vice President Dick Cheney, President George W. Bush, adviser David Addington and then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales. That would be a sticky, if not impossible, argument for government lawyers to have made.

Yoo hasn’t completely lost his government support, though. His choice of private counsel, who’s defended Yoo in such sticky controversies before, is Miguel Estrada, a former Bush nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit whose appointment was quashed in 2003 by Senate Democrats — a point harped on by Republicans during the recent confirmation hearing of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Estrada’s fees will be paid by U.S. taxpayers.

WE, as taxpayers are on the hook for all the monetary antics of the governement, I say let the fool pay his own legal fees……which he would not have accured if he had done nothing illegal.  Just a thought.