Allow me to point out a total misconstruction of a view expressed in my article 'Anwar and the IMF' in malaysiakini's interview with Prof KS Jomo.

The interviewer suggested in a question that I had "argued that South Korea and Thailand supported the US invasion of Iraq because their governments were beholden to the US after the IMF programmes".

What I actually wrote was that, "their capacity for autonomous economic and political decision-making which was already severely hampered by their client or crony relationship with Washington, is now even more limited than before.

"South Korean and Thai intellectuals lament that since the financial crisis, Washington appears to be in a stronger position to arm-twist their ruling elites to toe its foreign policy dictates. Is it any wonder then that in spite of popular opposition to the war on Iraq, the South Korean leadership chose to back the Washington cabal?

"Or, should we be surprised that in spite of his rhetoric, the Thai prime minister in the end sent troops to bolster the US-led occupying force in Iraq?"

Because the question itself was misconstrued, Jomo's answer was unfortunately off the mark.

Jomo also implies that I had quoted Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz as a way of persuading people that Malaysia's capital controls had worked. If I quoted Stiglitz, it is because I found his arguments cogent and convincing.

In this regard - at least for me - his chapter on the East Asia financial crisis in his 'Globalisation and its Discontents' eclipses 'The Malaysian Eclipse'.