Daily Mail:

A secret court is seizing the assets of thousands of elderly and mentally impaired people and turning control of their lives over to the State - against the wishes of their relatives.

The draconian measures are being imposed by the little-known Court of Protection, set up two years ago to act in the interests of people suffering from Alzheimer's or other mental incapacity.

The court hears about 23,000 cases a year - always in private - involving people deemed unable to take their own decisions. Using far-reaching powers, the court has so far taken control of more than £3.2billion of assets.

(In case you don't know, that's French for "Lay back and enjoy it.") Baseline Scenario:

On Friday morning, Diana Farrell – a senior White House official – made a significant statement on NPR’s Morning Edition, with regard to whether our largest banks are too big and should be broken up.

 “Ms. DIANA FARRELL (Deputy Assistant for Economy Policy): We understand Simon Johnson’s views on this, and I guess the response is the following….  

 “Ms. FARRELL: We have created them [our biggest banks], and we’re sort of past that point, and I think that in some sense, the genie’s out of the bottle and what we need to do is to manage them and to oversee them, as opposed to hark back to a time that we’re unlikely to ever come back to or want to come back to.” (full transcript)

Ms. Farrell is Larry Summers’s deputy on the National Economic Council ....

Whaddaya mean, "we"?

From the Star Tribune:

"One victim used to sell health insurance.

Another is a retired deputy attorney general.

A third is a 93-year-old woman from West St. Paul.

All three were tricked into buying what they thought were health insurance policies that turned out to be empty promises, according to two lawsuits filed Wednesday by Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson.

Swanson accused two out-of-state companies, Consumer Health Benefits Association and Home Health America LLC, of "scamming Minnesotans citizens."