Since the very beginning as a nation, we have been continually out of the frying pan, into the fire. What do you call a state that has no foodstuff for its common man and no electricity for its industry? A failed state. A mere pawn in strategic games of the superpower, our country is a sorry sight; nothing left in the kitty after all resources were squandered to gross mismanagement, graft of leadership and bureaucratic corruption, it has mired into the malaises of poverty, strife and a war within. The economy having collapsed totally, we are presently at the IMF door, cap in hand. Our great expectations, though, are likely to be spurned because these international monetary agencies are actually satellites of the superpower. Their gambit is to hold the poor countries down so that they can never become free from foreign interference. Their agents in our midst broker agreements suited to their, rather than our, interests. Small wonder every time Pakistan needs an economic helmsman, we get these numbers-crunching bankers from World Bank and IMF instead of some visionary economists who could set our economy on a safer course. In dire need of foreign exchange in the present crisis, we require $5billion to $8 billion at the very least to fill the gap of our annual current account deficit. That is enough to make slave of a nation. Once done with present firefighting, we should set up a commission of sincere and patriotic economic experts to plan a better future for us. -MUHAMMAD QASIM, Muzaffargarh, via e-mail, October 26.