A reader of John Cassidy's review of Joseph Stiglitz's book "Globalization and Its Discontents" might naturally assume that Stiglitz's stories about the International Monetary Fund are not in dispute (Books, July 15th). For example, Cassidy begins with Stiglitz's account of how he learned, in 1998, that the I.M.F. was responsible for the collapse of a Moroccan chicken-rearing enterprise because it had instructed the government to get out of the business of distributing chicks. The I.M.F. has never given Morocco any advice on chicken distribution, although it has advised against state subsidies for particular industries in many countries. Stiglitz's stories about the I.M.F. too often seem to be just stories. And too often he seems to be living in an imaginary world, where governments in financial crisis should sell more of their unwanted debt or pump out more of their money; where the transition to a market economy in Russia should have been kept on hold, in the midst of political collapse, to await the formation of market-oriented institutions; where the I.M.F. is responsible for almost all the failings of globalization; and where Joseph Stiglitz is never wrong.