Subject: File No. S7-14-08
From: Friend Of Liberty

October 14, 2008

10/14/08

Government has currently helped create the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. In fact it is possible that the current crisis will be worse.

Now government wants to further regulate and reclassify fixed insurance products as securities ostensibly because they are being sold as "investments" and to "protect the consumer."

This is pure lunacy.

What has happened to the value of almost every non-exempt security over the last 12 months?

What has happened to the value of fixed index annuities and certificate of deposits over the last 12 months?

How anyone can claim that any type of fixed insurance product is a security after the events of the last 12 months is truly mind-boggling.

Another question...if someone sold a certificate of deposit as an "investment" would that make it an investment? I don't think so.

There has been a concerted effort over the last several years to marginalize fixed index annuities. It has been orchestrated by competitors, advanced ad nauseam by their willing accomplices in the media and even more distressingly...assisted by supposedly non-partisan regulators who are in fact totally beholden to the securities and banking industry.

Where are these defenders of the public now?

How many people where taken in by their efforts to protect the securities industry from their clients own financial self-interest? The client no longer wanted to accept market risk so what is the real issue here?

How many of those same people have now suffered substantial losses?

Over the last several years non-security licensed advisors have been persecuted for simply helping their clients move from a position of risk to a position of safety.

Why should moving a client to a position of safety require a securities license?

How many banks are under fire for moving money out of securities and into CD's, money market accounts or Treasuries?

The question that really needs to be asked is this, who really benefits from this new proposed rule? It is certainly NOT the consumer as the events of the last year have dramatically and conclusively shown.

It seems to me the primary beneficiaries are those same people and institutions that now have secured a massive bailout while dramatically expanding government power yet again.

Who has paid the price for all this nonsense? As usual it is the very same people that government assures us that it trying to protect.

Withdraw the proposed rule.