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A handful of large websites will go dark on Wednesday to protest an anti-piracy bill that critics say will wreck the Internet as we know it.

Wikipedia, user-submitted news site Reddit, the blog Boing Boing and the Cheezburger network of comedy sites all plan to participate in the blackout. The protest is their response to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill, a piece of proposed legislation that is working its way through Congress.

Introduced in the House of Representatives in late October, the bill aims to crack down on copyright infringement by restricting access to sites that fuel it. Its targets include "rogue" overseas sites like torrent hub The Pirate Bay, which essentially operates as a trading ground for illegal downloads of movies and other digital content.

A similar bill called the Protect IP Act was approved by a Senate committee in May and is now pending before the full Senate.

The controversial legislation has turned into an all-out war between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Media companies have united in favor of it, while tech’s power players are throwing their might into opposing it.

If SOPA passes, copyright holders would be able to complain to law enforcement officials and get websites shut down. Search engines and other providers would have to block rogue sites when ordered to do so by a judge. Sites could be punished for hosting pirated content in the first place — and Internet companies are worried that they could be held liable for users’ actions.

As BoingBoing wrote: "Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages, just to be sure that we weren’t in some way impinging on the ability of five Hollywood studios, four multinational record labels, and six global publishers to maximize their profits."

White House jumps in: The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was supposed to hold a hearing with industry experts on Wednesday, which is why sites targeted that day for a blackout.

But Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California who opposes SOPA, postponed the hearing on Friday after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said the bill won’t move in its current form.

Cantor’s comments sparked some news reports claiming that SOPA is dead, but an aide in Issa’s office said "that’s probably a little premature."

Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian was slated to testify in Washington, but he said he will now instead attend a protest rally in New York City organized by the group NY Tech Meetup. They plan to assemble outside the offices of New York senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.

The White House released its first statement about the bill on Saturday. The Obama administration wrote that it would not support legislation that mandates "tamper[ing] with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS) bad credit payday advance."

As originally written, SOPA would have required Internet access providers and other companies to block access to targeted sites in ways that were rife with potential unintended consequences. The White House said its analysis of the original legislation’s technical provisions "suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity."

The White House’s statement came shortly after one of SOPA’s lead sponsors, Texas Republican Lamar Smith, agreed to remove SOPA’s DNS blocking provisions.

Issa’s aide says that isn’t enough: "Merely taking out the DNS-blocking provisions doesn’t not rectify a bill that’s fundamentally flawed."

The controversial bill, once expected to sail quickly through committee approval in the House, is now being extensively reworked before it comes up for a commitee vote.

Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of News Corp. (), voiced his frustration with the White House’s stance in a series of tweets over the weekend.

"Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery," Murdoch wrote on Twitter.

In addition to Murdoch, SOPA has drawn support from groups including the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, which say that online piracy leads to U.S. job losses by depriving content creators of income. Time Warner, the parent company of CNNMoney, is among the industry supporters of the legislation.

Proponents of the bill dismiss accusations of censorship, saying that the legislation is meant to revamp a broken system that doesn’t adequately prevent criminal behavior.

But SOPA’s critics say that say that the bill’s backers don’t understand the Internet, and therefore don’t appreciate the implications of the legislation they’re considering.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of House members has proposed an alternative bill, the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN).

This legislation would allow rights holders to ask the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to enforce current laws by targeting the actual content pirates. OPEN’s backers have posted the draft legislation online and invited the Web community to comment on and revise the proposal.

SOPA supporters counter that the ITC doesn’t have the resources for such enforcement, and that giving it those resources would be too expensive. 

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Funds that give everyone from retirees to money managers easier access to junk bonds are fueling the biggest price swings in more than two years after their buying power surged tenfold.

Exchange-traded funds that track high-yield bond indexes exceed $22 billion, up from about $2 billion three years ago.

While that’s just 2 percent of the $1 trillion in U.S. corporate speculative-grade debt outstanding, ETFs are among the biggest holders of benchmark securities, including those of casino owner Caesars Entertainment Corp. and HCA Inc.

ETFs, which drew scrutiny last year as riskier versions emerged, are adding to volatility because of rules that promote trading. A measure of price swings for junk bonds was seven times higher in November than May, making it harder for the neediest borrowers to raise capital guaranteed high risk personal loans.

Their influence in the market for high-yield, high-risk debt is becoming similar to what ETFs, which have grown to $1.5 trillion from $109 billion in 10 years, have done in other assets.

While cash has poured into ETFs, they haven’t outperformed. Speculative-grade bonds on average returned 40 percent since April 2007, compared with 36.3 percent for investment-grade debt and 37.3 percent for U.S. Treasuries, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data.

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- Despite an upswing in hiring during 2011, the jobs crisis could last many more years as millions of Americans struggle to find work.

In Orlando, Florida, Brenda Solomon lost her retail job last May at a department store and was unable to find even temporary work during the holiday season.

“I’ve tried and tried and tried,” Solomon, 58, said on Friday while visiting a job center.

Earlier, the U.S. Labor department said employers added 200,000 jobs during December, many more than expected by Wall Street. In 2011 as a whole, 1.64 million jobs were created, well above the 940,000 in 2010 and the best showing since 2006.

But the amount of jobs in the economy is still about 6.1 million lower than before the brutal 2007-2009 recession. At December’s pace of gains, it would take about 2 1/2 years just to get back to pre-recession levels of employment.

That means many people will be in for an agonizing wait.

In December, 5.6 million of the nation’s unemployed had been out of work for at least six months, the Labor Department data showed, only slightly lower than the previous month.

Laquanda Carmichael has been without work for just over a year and has seen no improvement in the labor market.

“It’s been the same to me. I have a lot of discouraging days,” the 39 year-old former science teacher and hospital worker said.

“I’m looking for anything right now. Warehouse processing, hospitality, anything.”

While jobs creation certainly picked up in the United States during the end of the year, economists point out that even a gain of 200,000 underwhelms considering constant growth in the population and the still-high 8.5 percent unemployment rate.

Princeton University economist Paul Krugman said that at December’s pace it could take a decade for the labor market to recover from the recession.

In a back-of-the-envelope calculation, Krugman was considering that the country’s growing population adds at least 100,000 people to the workforce every month.

“We need much faster job growth,” he wrote on his blog. “It says something about how beaten down we are that this (jobs report for December) is considered good news.”

The unemployment numbers reflect a persistent difference between those with a higher education and those without - especially in certain sectors like engineering.

Nearly 90 percent of 2011 graduates from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts got jobs or attended graduate school - almost the same level as before 2008.

Jeanette Doyle, director of the school’s Career Development Center, said there was a 7 percent uptick in late 2011 in the number of companies at the school’s fall recruiting event, and 17 companies were on a wait list to get in.

For lower-paid Americans, the picture is very different.

Construction worker Richard White, also at the job center in Orlando, has not had steady work in the last three years, and gets by on occasional stints doing electrical work or carpentry.

In December, the construction industry added 17,000 jobs. But that sector, devastated by a burst housing bubble that helped trigger the last recession, has even farther to go than the rest of the economy before it can recover.

There were still almost a third fewer construction jobs in December than at the industry’s pre-recession peak in August 2006.

As for the December’s advance, White said: “I’m not seeing it.”

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FRANKLIN COUNTY • The wound left when Chrysler shuttered its plants in 2008 and 2009 hasn’t healed in nearby Franklin County, where residents for years relied on those paychecks.

The county has seen the sharpest rise in poverty in the metro region since the recession, according to recently released census figures. In 2006, a year before the recession officially began, 10.3 percent of residents lived below the poverty level. That figure hit 17 percent in 2010, the most recent statistics available.

When asked why the county was hit so hard, those who work with the poor unanimously cite the Chrysler closure in Fenton and its lingering effects on jobs.

“I think disproportionately we were hit harder than other areas, and that showed in our unemployment rate,” said Presiding County Commissioner John Griesheimer.

Many in the county haven’t found a way to replace good-paying jobs, and the county is about to be dealt another blow with ties to the auto industry.

Harman-Becker Automotive Systems plans to start shutting its plant in Washington, Mo., as soon as this month, leaving nearly 300 people without jobs, said Sandy Lucy, the city’s mayor.

Most of those jobs are in manufacturing. Many workers earn $40,000 to $60,000 a year assembling auto accessories such as car radios and navigation systems. The company supplied parts to the Chrysler plant.

Harman-Becker’s closure was announced more than a year ago but wasn’t supposed to begin until summer. The plant is now expected to be shuttered by spring.

The plant is an example of efforts to create county jobs. The state and city bent over backward to lure Harman-Becker to Washington in 2005, with incentives worth nearly $3 million.

The company has repaid the state almost $540,000 under a “clawback provision,” which allows the state to recover tax money from businesses that fail to meet economic commitments, according to the Missouri Department of Economic Development.

The company did not have to repay nearly $40,000 it received through the Missouri Quality Jobs program because it created and maintained jobs for three years. Harman-Becker did not respond to an email request for comment.

The pending closure worries Sandy Crider, executive director of Loving Hearts Outreach food pantry in Washington. She sees people coming to the pantry who lost jobs in the auto industry that paid $25 or $30 an hour with health benefits and retirement plans, and who have continued to struggle after those jobs disappeared.

“Now they’re working two part-time jobs for minimum wage and no health insurance,” Crider said. “They’re embarrassed because they can’t find jobs to bring them back to the point where they were in the past.”

A 58-year-old freelance Web developer standing in line recently at the Agape House food pantry in St. Clair said the loss of the plants has crippled the county and sent ripples beyond the auto industry. His own workload is down 40 percent from before the recession, said the man, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Bill, so his customers wouldn’t know his financial situation.

“I could see if you’re a bad person, you’re not going to hold a job,” he said. “But I see a lot of good, hardworking people who want a job and there’s nothing for them.”

Crider said more families are becoming homeless and must move in with other family members, also on fixed incomes.

“That’s what the homelessness looks like in Franklin County,” she said.

Ellen Dietrich, director of community relations of the Jefferson Franklin Community Action Corp., has seen the uptick in poverty, too.

Not long ago, a woman who used to donate came into the social service agency’s office. Instead of writing a check, she asked for help.

“People come in and give us résumés and say if we know of anyone hiring, please pass it along,” said Tammy Stowe, executive director of the Union Chamber of Commerce.

Franklin County government relies heavily on sales tax, but collections hit a low of $4.9 million in 2009. Since then, sales tax revenue has been on a slight upswing, said county Auditor Tammy Vemmer.

To help balance the budget the last couple of years, county employees have been required to clean their own offices to save on janitorial services. This year, unelected, full-time county employees will get a $700 boost in pay. They have not seen raises since 2008, Vemmer said.

Griesheimer, the presiding county commissioner, said the county had been able to avoid layoffs, unlike the private sector.

From January 2009 through March 2011, unemployment in Franklin County topped 10 percent for all but two months, and peaked at 13.4 percent in February 2010. The rate dipped to 8.8 percent in November, the most recent data available.

Christie Bean, of Gerald, has searched for a full-time job for more than five years. “I call the temp service every day,” she said.

Bean lost her assembly-line position when the Daisy BB bullet factory shut down in Salem, Mo. She’d like a permanent factory job but knows she can’t be picky.

“People who are getting jobs are holding onto them,” said Bean, 42.

Her husband sells scrap metal and fixes cars, but work has dried up. He has resorted to selling firewood door to door.

“He’s working hard and he’s not getting anywhere,” said Bean. He once had a good factory job, too, she said, but he lost it because of back problems.

Last month, Bean and her sister stopped at the Loving Hearts Outreach food pantry in Washington. Bean packed a basket of pasta, tuna, tomato soup, applesauce and red beans and rice into the back seat of her car and was grateful for it.

Other county residents are slowly digging their way out. Cody Sansom, 27, once made $20 an hour working construction jobs. When the demand for new houses dried up, so did work. He became homeless three years ago and moved to the Agape House shelter three months ago.

He recently landed a job as a cashier and pizza cook at a convenience store, where he earns minimum wage.

“It’s the lowest I’ve ever made,” said Sansom, who will start classes at East Central College in Union next month. “But it’s a job.”

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Stocks are opening slightly lower as worries over the European debt crisis persist, overshadowing a strong auction of Italian government debt.

The European Central Bank said the continent’s banks parked a record $590.72 billion overnight at the bank, reflecting distrust in the European banking system.

Italy held two successful bond auctions Wednesday at a substantially lower cost than what it paid in similar auctions last month payday loan lenders. The sales raised hopes that the country would be able to roll over its enormous national debt with new bonds.

The Dow Jones industrial average is down 20 points at 12,272 in early trading. The S&P 500 is down 3 at 1,262. The Nasdaq is down 6 at 2,619.

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Russia unexpectedly reduced its benchmark rate, suggesting policy makers see a global economic slump posing greater risks than inflation to the world

+%3Cp%3E+More+monetary+stimulus+from+the+U.S.+Federal+Reserve+would+be+the+%22wrong+path%2C%22+despite+the+threat+the+simmering+European+debt+crisis+is+posing+for+the+U.S.+economy%2C+a+top+Fed+official+known+for+his+hawkish+views+on+inflation+said+on+Friday.%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EIt+is+up+to+Congress+and+the+President+–+not+the+U.S.+central+bank+–+to+clean+up+the+%22yucky+mess%22+that+is+the+country%27s+debt+and+fiscal+problems%2C+Dallas+Fed+President+Richard+Fisher+said%2C+reprising+what+is+for+him+a+frequent+theme+in+public+speeches.%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3E%22The+Federal+Reserve+has+done+everything+it+can%2C+and+more%2C+to+reduce+unemployment+without+forsaking+our+sacred+commitment+to+maintaining+price+stability%2C+or+crossing+over+the+monetary+river+Styx+into+full-blown+debt+monetization%2C%22+Fisher+told+the+Austin+Chamber+of+Commerce.+%22From+my+standpoint%2C+resorting+to+further+monetary+accommodation+to+clean+out+the+sink%2C+clogged+by+the+flotsam+and+jetsam+of+a+jolly%2C+drunken+fiscal+and+financial+party+that+has+gone+on+far+too+long%2C+is+the+wrong+path+to+follow.%22%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EThe+U.S.+central+bank+stood+pat+on+policy+at+its+meeting+Tuesday%2C+leaving+interest+rates+near+zero%2C+and+continuing+to+signal+that+it+will+keep+them+there+through+at+least+mid-2013.+One+policymaker%2C+Chicago+Fed+President+Charles+Evans%2C+dissented%2C+calling+for+further+easing.%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3ESpeaking+in+Florence%2C+Italy+on+Friday%2C+Evans+reiterated+his+call+for+the+Fed+to+keep+rates+low+until+unemployment%2C+now+at+8.6+percent%2C+falls+below+7+percent%2C+as+long+as+inflation+does+not+threaten+to+top+3+percent.%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EHe+also+said+that+while+the+United+States+needs+better+fiscal+discipline+in+the+medium+and+long+term%2C+some+%22smart+stimulus%22+would+help+a+lot+in+the+short+term.%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EDISSENTERS%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EFisher+and+fellow+hawks+Minneapolis+Fed+President+Narayana+Kocherlakota+and+Philadelphia+Fed+President+Charles+Plosser+were+the+dissenters+earlier+this+year+as+the+Fed+eased+policy+to+jumpstart+a+slowing+recovery.%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EFisher+on+Friday+said+his+votes+were+driven+not+by+a+fear+that+easing+would+stoke+inflation+but+on+concern+it+would+not+help+on+employment.%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EInflation%2C+he+said%2C+is+headed+back+down+toward+the+Fed%27s+2+percent+target%2C+and+recent+economic+indicators+suggest+domestic+demand+is+strengthening.%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EStill%2C+souring+conditions+in+Europe+and+slowing+growth+in+emerging+economies+like+China+and+Brazil+threaten+to+knock+the+U.S.+recovery+off+course+again%2C+Fisher+said.%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EFinancial+markets+remain+on+edge+about+Europe%27s+ability+to+put+a+floor+under+a+bond+market+selloff+that+is+pushing+borrowing+costs+for+countries+such+as+Italy+and+Spain+toward+unsustainable+levels.%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EBut+there+is+little+U.S.+policymakers+can+do+but+%22pray+that+fiscal+and+monetary+authorities+abroad+get+it+right%2C%22+Fisher+said.+To+reporters+after+the+speech%2C+Fisher+said+he+does+not+envision+the+need+for+a+monetary+policy+response+to+Europe%27s+crisis%2C+unless+there+were+to+be+a+panic+of+some+sort.%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EIn+testimony+at+the+U.S.+House+of+Representatives+Friday%2C+the+New+York+Fed%27s+powerful+chief%2C+William+Dudley%2C+made+a+similar+point.%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3E%22I+don%27t+anticipate%2C+even+if+the+crisis+in+Europe+were+to+worsen%2C+further+steps+on+the+part+of+the+Federal+Reserve+at+this+time%2C%22+Dudley+told+the+panel+of+lawmakers.%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3ESpeaking+in+the+Texas+capital+about+1%2C000+miles+away%2C+Fisher+warned+against+the+Fed+opening+the+spigots+of+liquidity+further+to+get+the+economy+moving+again%2C+when+the+biggest+culprit+in+his+view+was+uncertainty+over+tax+policy%2C+given+the+huge+national+debt.%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3E%22It+may+provide+immediate+relief+but+risks+destroying+the+plumbing+of+the+entire+house%2C%22+said+Fisher%2C+who+often+uses+colorful+metaphors+and+literary+references+to+enliven+his+speeches.+%22Better+that+the+Congress+and+the+president+–+the+makers+of+fiscal+policy+and+regulation+–+roll+up+their+sleeves+and+get+on+with+the+yucky+task+of+cleaning+out+the+clogged+drain.%22%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EFisher+and+his+fellow+hawkish+dissenters+rotate+off+the+Fed%27s+policy-setting+panel+next+year%2C+and+only+one+policy+hawk+–+Richmond+Fed+President+Jeffrey+Lacker+–+will+rotate+in.%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EThe+change+in+voting+line-up+means+the+panel+will+lean+more+dovish+than+it+did+last+year%2C+suggesting+Fed+Chairman+Ben+Bernanke+may+have+more+support+for+further+easing+in+the+New+Year.%3C%2Fp%3E++%3Cp%3E%3Ca+href%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Fassets%2Fprint%3Faid%3DUSTRE7BC0CW20111217%27+rel%3D%27nofollow%27%3ERead+more%3C%2Fa%3E%3C%2Fp%3E+

The Sappington Farmers Market, which filed for bankruptcy Friday, will remain open despite its troubles.

“The reorganization of Sappington Farmers Market will allow the store to remain open and viable,” said Nancy Smith, the market’s manager, in a written statement. “We feel this will position us to be successful in the future.”

Smith didn’t provide an interview.

The store, on Watson Road in Marlborough, has roots going back to the early 1980s, and has been at its present location since 1995 where it has gained a loyal following of bargain hunters and proponents of local farming.

The store’s mission has long been to support area farmers by featuring their products.

In her statement released Saturday, Smith said the store would continue to feature local farmers, and would continue distributing their products not only through the store, but through schools, restaurants and a “mobile market instant payday loans.”

The store’s founder, Tessa Greenspan, sold it in 2008 to a cooperative of small-scale farmers known as the Missouri Farmers Union, which formed a company called Farm to Family Naturally LLC to buy the business.

Farm to Family Naturally, which does business as Sappington Farmers Market, was the organization that filed forChapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday.

Members of the original cooperative who purchased the store have since left, according to employees.

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