Subject: File No. S7-14-08
From: Carl A Ostenson

October 14, 2008

I am an insurance agent. I was securities licensed from 1994-2004. After the crash of 2000-2002 watching my clients lose a large amount of money, I decided that I never again wanted to sell something that people could lose money in.

Fixed annuities fit a perfect niche. Either fixed rate or indexed. They offer a decent return without putting the clients money at risk. They have minimum guarantees and guarantees on principal. How can that be a security?

There are bad salesmen in any industry, but that shouldn't make an indexed annuity a security just because there were some bad salesmen. I present the product in an honest, factual way and people either want it or they don't.

Also the insurance companies have responded and added additional disclosure forms. It would be very difficult to sell an indexed annuity now, and not go through surrender charges or any of the other things that people complained about a few years ago.

To think that I would have to go back to the securities field, which I left because people lost money, in order to sell a product that is safe, seems ridiculous to me.

Keep regulating Wall Street. You have your hands full there. Illinois is doing just fine regulating our insurance industry. We don't need the Federal Government running regulating something the states can do by themselves.