I have been your reader since malaysiakini 's debut in November, 1999. While I commend you for providing Malaysians generally balanced reports and intelligent commentaries, I think you have failed in one crucial aspect.

I refer to the lack of critical economic reports, and the almost total absence of participation by IMF supporters. I don't know if it is your editorial policy or ideological position to block out 'neo-imperialism' but if it is, I think you have made a grave mistake.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is not as devilish as Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his cronies and ideologues make out to be. Both Malaysia and China are members of IMF, and communist China twice borrowed from IMF in the 1980s to overcome its balance-of-payment problems. If the most leftist communists in China were not ashamed to seek IMF assistance, what can't Malaysia do the same?

The problem, as I, a practising banker see it, is not about national sovereignty or pride or any stuff like that. It is about, as former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim has pointed out and exposed, the fact that the corrupt government has many books to hide from the market and the Malaysian taxpayers.

Mahathir and his corrupt government are merely using left-wing slogans and ideology to protect themselves from being exposed. Think again, seriously, which institution is better: the private Saloman Smith Barney which answers to no one but its boss, namely Mahathir, or the public IMF which at least publishes reports every year to account for its measures to all member-states?

Don't tell me left-wing economists like Prof KS Jomo and Martin Khor, etc. are supporting Saloman Smith Barney as an anti-imperialist force.

These left-wing economists are mostly academicians and NGO activists who have no experience in real life running businesses and finance. What they know is only to talk and write for their own academic advancements, and to publish obscure books.

We are the people who suffer every day from their sloganeering and sterile and unproductive concepts of 'neo-colonialism", 'imperialism', 'US hegemony'. etc. It is time for malaysiakini to open debates with active participation from IMF supporters like me.

Time is running out. The country is doomed. I hope my warning is conveyed to all Malaysians.