I refer to the malaysiakini report FTA 'not quick-fix solution' for NEP woes . Your reporter's interview with Charles Santiago prompts me to wonder where this so-called 'economist' was educated, and whether anyone in Malaysia ever checks for different perspectives of an issue.

First, your reporter fails to challenge Santiago's assumption that a free-trade agreement with the US is a sinister US plot to control Malaysia.

Second, Santiago's trade figures are outrageously misleading and almost comically disingenuous. He claims that Malaysia imports more of certain electronic components from the US than the same components it exports to the US.

Be that as it may (or may not, because I don't believe anything this hack says), he never mentions the actual trade balance between Malaysia and the US. In 2005, the US-Malaysia trade balance was US$23 billion in favour of Malaysia. In 2006 up to October, the latest figure available, it has so far been US$19 billion.

That's $19 billion, not million. How on earth does this translate as a US domination of the Malaysian economy? Your readers may like to check the figures here .

They will see the figures going back to 1985, and they will see that the US has never had a favourable or equitable trade balance with Malaysia.

I suppose Malaysian 'economists' like Santiago believe the dismantling of Malaysia's protectionist economy amount to US domination. From my perspective, why should the US have to subsidise the gross trade advantages of every tin-pot authoritarian little country in the world?