Our sacred reserves!

Don't touch it. This is our hard earned savings accumulated over the years. And only in extreme conditions will the reserves be made available, through a complicated systems controlled by two keys and trusted people. The officially declared reserves were over $200b, some parked in GIC, some in Temasek, some dunno where, but are there. We are so careful in spending our reserves. It is not to be touched by any flimsy excuses. It is protected by several layers of thick carbonised steel. But when they were in another form, in the hands of GIC and Temasek, they become easily available for investments. Acceptable that investments are not spending, just investing to grow the reserves. The current crisis and the colossal losses to our reserves, a sum many times more than the $4.9b we are dipping into it, called for a rethink in the investment policies of the two giant SWFs. How much risk is tolerable or acceptable, how much can we afford to lose. Shall our reserves be invested in 'dangerous asset class'? Putting it in simpler words, 'dangerous asset class' is not much different from taking unacceptable high risk, like gambling, double or nothing. When our reserves are near to a point of being untouchables, our investment policies must be one that matches the stringent criteria of protecting our reserves to ensure that it would not be washed out for any investing mistakes. If we protect the reserves like hell, and have an investment policies that compromise its existence, the contradiction is not acceptable. The other point that I want to make is very elementary. If we do not know what is our reserves, how do we know that it is there and not being spent? We may have a fortress guarding a piece of worthless paper for all you know. Can we just rely on the word trust as we were told to do so in Parliament?