Goodbye, Great Britain by Kathleen Burk
In this authoritative and gripping book—the first full account of the 1976 International Monetary Fund crisis—Kathleen Burk and Alec Cairncross peel back the surface of the most searing economic crisis of postwar Britain to reveal its historical roots and contemporary context. During the spring of 1976, the plummeting value of the British pound against the U.S. dollar triggered a traumatic economic and political crisis. International confidence in the pound collapsed; an article in the Wall Street Journal, headlined "Good-bye, Great Britain," urged investors to get out of sterling. Refused aid by the London and New York markets, the Labour Government under Prime Minister James Callaghan was forced to turn for help to the IMF—a highly unusual move for a developed Western economy. Fearing that the economic crisis would drive Britain into a left-wing siege economy which would endanger NATO and the EEC, the United States and Germany used the IMF loan as a means to force Britain to make major domestic policy changes; when the IMF mission arrived in London in November 1976, it was announced that the price for the loan included deep cuts in domestic spending. Burk and Cairncross uncover the maneuvers of the Labour Government to evade IMF conditions. They also examine underlying economic factors, the political agenda, the rise of monetarist ideas, and the Keynesian response. Juxtaposing narrative with analysis, they provide surprising answers to critical questions and reveal how the breakdown of the post-war consensus on the macroeconomic management paved the way for the triumph of Thatcherism.
KATHLEEN BURK was born and raised in California and, as the daughter of a grape farmer, has wine in her bones. While at the University of California at Berkeley, she traveled around Napa Valley tasting wine, riding pillion on a 750cc motorcycle. At Oxford she discovered European wines, to which she is devoted. She has a Diploma in Wine and Spirits, writes for the World of Fine Wine, and is a judge for the International Wine and Spirits Competition. She is the Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at University College London and the author of Old World, New World: Great Britain and America from the Beginning.
MICHAEL BYWATER is an author, broadcaster, and culture critic. He writes for the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Times, and a host of other periodicals. He is also a regular broadcaster for the BBC, development executive at Studio Lambert TV in London, and intermittently teaches tragedy at the University of Cambridge.
He is author of Lost Worlds: What Have We Lost, and Where Did It Go? and Big Babies: Or: Why Can't We Just Grow Up? He is currently writing a book on male friendship,
A Fine Bromance.
MICHAEL BYWATER is an author, broadcaster, and culture critic. He writes for the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Times, and a host of other periodicals. He is also a regular broadcaster for the BBC, development executive at Studio Lambert TV in London, and intermittently teaches tragedy at the University of Cambridge.
He is author of Lost Worlds: What Have We Lost, and Where Did It Go? and Big Babies: Or: Why Can't We Just Grow Up? He is currently writing a book on male friendship,
A Fine Bromance.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780300057287 |
| ISBN 10 | 0300057288 |
| Title | Goodbye, Great Britain |
| Author | Kathleen Burk |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Yale University Press |
| Year published | 1992-03-25 |
| Number of pages | 256 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |