ECB is Bond Buyer of 'only resort' but who pays?

Bloomberg sums up the complete mess that is European economic policy at present in a report this morning, linked here. I can grasp quite easily that Bonds for the periphery countries (nice term that, an eventual Atlantic Seaboard EU breakaway, being a possible end result perhaps à la Nordic Bloc) are dodgy investments that even at yields above 10% where they are now headed are too risky by far for sane investors such as pensioners, but as a non-economist I do not see how they are less risky for ordinary taxpayers which is what ECB purchases will eventually have to prove to be. Yet there is of course a still bigger question, which taxpayers is the French head of the ECB, Jean-Claude Trichet, representing when he purchases such worthless paper? Especially given that his German opposite and front-running replacement candidate, Axel Weber, is on record as opposing the purchases. All this is not helped by the French Finance Minister being interviewed on Bloomberg TV, testerday morning leaving the distinct impression she has no idea as to the answer to such painful questions. As presently a French taxpayer I am feeling none too comfortable with the conclusions to all this to which I am being reluctantly drawn.