The UK's IMF bailout has things to teach us 50 years on

The UK’s 1976 IMF bailout began after Chancellor Denis Healey realized he would be out of contact with London for 17 hours. On September 28, 1976, while at Heathrow en route from the Commonwealth finance ministers’ meeting in Hong Kong to the IMF annual meeting in Manila, Sterling was falling and foreign-currency reserves were draining. Healey returned and initiated a $3.9bn loan request—then the largest ever sought from the fund. The IMF’s conditions drove heavy public-spending cuts and sparked cabinet clashes, but Prime Minister James Callaghan’s government accepted them over alternatives like import controls or default.