" to be honest, i dun blame the town counicl for investing the
moeny. Like all investment, there's always a risk involve. Else,
inflation is just gona diminnish their funds. It is an honest
mistake and someone will have to take the fall. We all like to go
around witch hunting when thing goes wrong, such is the society we
live in. Else, there wont be improvement if ppl think they can get
away with lossing million of dollars."
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I agree with EarlNeo. Over the last 2 years,
many of us have complained about high inflation and low FD interest
rate and thus we may have also considered alternative investments
(unit trusts, equities, structured deposits..) and possibly got our
fingers burnt 
Until the recent saga, very few knew that
structured deposits are high risk products. We know high risk high
returns but structured deposits are not high returns product so we
would not think that it carry high risk. Plus this is a world
crisis. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be so many of us caught by
surprise. It is a painful lesson for all.
So with inflation and rising cost of
construction, the value of our sinking fund will be dwindling.
Going forward, do we really not want our money to be invested? What
is considered safe? Bear in mind, until recently, even our cash in
banks were not guaranteed.
Actually, the town councils do release their
financial reports every year but until recently, none of us were
really interested in them. I was reading Bishan-Toa Payoh’s 2007
report yesterday. Have a look at page 27, on their notes on
investments. They have done very well from 2006 but I wonder what
their position is now? If they had not unwound their position, how
much is their paper loss?
http://www.btptc.org.sg/E%20News/AnnualReport/0607.pdf
$1b is a lot of money but each town spends
millions doing maintenance and upgrading each year so how long can
$1b last if they stop collecting SC charges? Let’s say we have
minimal sinking fund and just sufficient to carry out the usual
town works and my block needs to undergo upgrading, do we suddenly
increase SC charges for the whole town? Will the other blocks which
have undergone upgrading or have no need to upgrade be willing to
pay for my block upgrading? How much sinking fund should we
have?
I think swimming pool falls under Sports
council or something like that. I had checked on that sometime
back. Not sure if it’s still correct. Maybe it’s the high cost of
construction that has delayed the project. Construction costs were
up like 30-40% over the last 2 years, many jobs were put on
hold. Which bring us back to.. Do we want to keep the funds in
banks with interest of 1-2% or don't have sinking fund?
If any of us can predict the collapse of
Lehman, we would become multi-millionaire shortselling the
stock 
I wish I did...
