Buying and selling root certificates

Not that SSL certificates are worth the paper they aren't printed on; I still find this vaguely disturbing. Just who do you think your computer is trusting? http://www.websheji.com/domain-names/news/id506.html Bob Parsons, CEO of Go Daddy, said that Starfield Technologies, a subsidiary of the company, bought an unused root certificate, trusted by 99% percent of the browsers from ValiCert Inc more than a year ago has been developing the system since then. I'm not that interested in SSL for web servers, but I have noticed a gradual increase in the number of mail servers willing to STARTTLS with mine. I was experimenting with trying to verify some of the certificates presented, its not real security, but makes the logs cleaner.