I READ with disbelief yesterday's front-page report, 'Town councils' exposure: $16m'. How can the Members of Parliament of these constituencies seem unconcerned, insisting instead, by the tone of their replies, that what happened was something natural and not a big deal?

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(1) "How can the Members of Parliament of these constituencies seem unconcerned, insisting instead, by the tone of their replies, that what happened was something natural and not a big deal?"

(2)Ordinary Singaporean investors who did the same were labelled greedy for chasing a maximum return of 5 per cent on similar investments. Such investors were also accused of being naive to have trusted the relationship managers who peddled these products. Now, our very own town council leaders have done the same.

Liew Yeng Chee has brought up this kind of `double-speak' and `double-standards' where sauce for the gander is not sauce for the goose which educated Sporeans are finding harder and harder to accept. It just makes us so angry.
We are told we cannot say we went in with our eyes closed, that life is like that if you want higher rewards, there will be higher risks, better put money in CPF so safe, so rich when you see it etc
Now when it comes to town council and stat board same losses - oh, it is only so miniscule, so little percentage of their total money, look at it in perspective, they had accredited financial advisors to advise them, etc. The different tune jars the ears.

Why not swallow the same advice given to us?

Can be a dangerous trend for us to be "so forgiving", whenever there is a problem big or small as in the Ping Pong Ball or getting the wrong guy to run one of our largest corporations and paying him and "his team" millions - it's like "don't let it happen again" "let's move on", it should not have taken place at all in the first place. We have set high standards and very high expectation for ourselves so we cannot continue to brush things aside.

Accountability?

You think there will be accountability? Took how many weeks or months for them to disclose the information?

They should disclose the status of their entire portfolio to the public by now.

In Singapore when you (junior guy) make a mistake you deserve to be purnish. But when talent make mistakes they were just taking calculated risk and finiancial crisis is beyond control. Very soon we will hear comments like the right things have been done, lets move on and etc.

The PM should start thinking now. Is there any other information that they should tell the public.

Aiya, they are just looking after their own PAP people ma.

1. accountability? Diluted since mas salamat

2. compensation? Raise our conservancy charges (we should be compensated with much lower conservancy charges for the next ten years)

3. talented? Didn't fare better than the janitors they employed (qualifications din't mean anything)

4. other councils? ...wonder how is temasek and GIC doing with their ABC, UBS, CItigroup, Merill lynch....

Guys, shits happen... TC cant invest 100% into govy bonds earning less than 1% a yr... If u guys want 100% into riskfree inv, then be prepare for hike every year since the return is not enough to cover inflation...

I personally feel 35% into non riskfree is ok, and given the diversified portfolio, they are consider ok... What we are facing now is once in a century crisis, dents and bruises are unavoidable, as long as the tC didnt go bankrupt like a few counties on America...

I tell you. If we wind back the clock to 2 years ago, I bet no one will say that such credit-linked products are "highly risky". You are talking about the possibility of losing your principal investment only if one of the credit events occur, e.g. one of the linked entities in the basket goes bankrupt. And these entities - we are talking about global conglomerates with hundreds of billions in assets. 2 years ago, who would dare come out and say Lehman Brothers (which is 6 times the size of DBS) would go bankrupt on Sept 15, 2008.

It's easy to talk on hindsight. I bet you - even the most sophisticated investor or any senior banker would not predicted the turn of events as such. And for someone 2 years ago to sink in their money for a few years for a 5% annual return, just so long as those multi-billion companies do not go bust - is completely sane.