The UK used the money to quash nationalist rebellions all over the Empire.
Swap "The EU in 2018" for "The UK post-WW2" and the irony is delicious! [Commonarewe]
What irony would that be, Commonarewe?
The irony of the British taxpayer forking over £1bn to the DUP so that the Tory government can stay in power?
The fact that even though NI voted Remain it must leave and lose all the subsidies and the Regional Fund money, and the ready-made market that it enjoyed, and watch helplessly as its agriculture and food processing industries are decimated?
The irony of Wales, a net winner - and a big winner actually - when it comes to EU largesse, voting Leave, ditto Cornwall, then then expecting the same cash cow to materialise regardless?
The basic proposition of the Marshall Plan worked - widespread prosperity brought about political stability. It appears to be the case that in the UK widespread bribery is keeping the ship of state afloat. This is not a tenable answer to pressing political and economic questions, and nor is much further intervention by the Bank of England to prop up the £ a possibility.
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The far right has returned to power across Europe? Really?
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What exactly would Europe be today without our sacrifices?
Iirc, the Red Army and the population of the western USSR took quite a hit too but heyho.
You realise that the Leave diehards are lining up to get into bed with the same country that extracted a nice big pound of flesh when Britain had her back to the wall - and that this was at a time when both states had faced the same enemy shoulder to shoulder? How long did it take to repay the Anglo American Loan of 1946 - until 2006?
(This is the same US had abruptly and without warning ended Lend Lease, which was basically supporting the British economy, in 1945).
Y'all better get used to a lot of cap doffing, and cap extending in a horizontal direction.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-American_loan
Agreement
Terms
John Maynard Keynes, then in poor health and shortly before his death, was sent by the United Kingdom to the United States and Canada to obtain more funds.[5] British politicians expected that in view of the United Kingdom's contribution to the war effort, especially for the lives lost before the United States entered the fight in 1941, America would offer favorable terms. Instead of a grant or a gift, however, Keynes was offered a loan on favorable terms.
Historian Alan Sked has commented that, "the U.S. didn't seem to realize that Britain was bankrupt", and that the loan was "denounced in the House of Lords, but in the end the country had no choice."[6] America offered $US 3.75bn (US$51 billion in 2018) and Canada contributed another US$1.19 bn (US$16 billion in 2018), both at the rate of 2% annual interest.[7] The total amount repaid, including interest, was $7.5bn (£3.8bn) to the US and US$2bn (£1bn) to Canada.[8][9]
The loan was made subject to conditions, the most damaging of which was the convertibility of sterling.[10] Though not the intention, the effect of convertibility was to worsen British post-war economic problems. International sterling balances became convertible one year after the loan was ratified, on 15 July 1947. Within a month, nations with sterling balances (e.g. pounds which they had earned from buying British exports, and which they were now permitted to sell to Britain in exchange for dollars) had drawn almost a billion dollars from British dollar reserves, forcing the British government to suspend convertibility and to begin immediate drastic cuts in domestic and overseas expenditure. The rapid loss of dollar reserves also highlighted the weakness of sterling, which was duly devalued in 1949 from $4.02 to $2.80.[11]
In later years, the term of 2% interest was rather less than the prevailing market interest rates, resulting in it being described as a "very advantageous loan" by members of the British government, as elaborated below.
Loan spending
Much of the loan had been earmarked for foreign military spending to maintain the United Kingdom's empire and payments to British allies prior to its passage, which had been concealed in negotiations through to the summer of 1946.[12] Keynes had noted that a failure to pass the loan agreement would cause Britain to abandon its military outposts in the Middle Eastern, Asian and Mediterranean regions, as the alternative of reducing British standards of living was politically unfeasible. [13]
Repayment
The last payment was made on 29 December 2006 for the sum of about $83m (£45.5m), the 29th being the last working day of the year.[2][4][14] The final payment was actually six years late, the British Government having suspended payments due in the years 1956, 1957, 1964, 1965, 1968 and 1976 because the exchange rates were seen as impractical.[15] After this final payment Britain's Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Ed Balls, formally thanked the US for its wartime support.
Irony alert - the US made the UK pay interest on a loan that was to be used to prop up America's policy as the Cold War took hold.
America is always right...right?
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And locking southern Europe into an unbreakable debtors' prison
Conflation of the Euro and the EU is a predictable characteristic of our Visitors.
The animosity toward the Euro and toward the EU is based on certain fixed ideas:
Once a German Nazi, always a German Nazi.
The British couldn't possibly be fascists.
FYI - wrt 'debtors' prisons - www.statista.com/statistics/269684/national-debt-in-eu-countries-in-relation-to-gross-domestic-product-gdp/
Remarkably, Ireland is doing better than the UK here despite surviving an economic blowout of epic proportions with a little help from her friends in the Bundesbank. The UK is sitting pretty between the average for the EU and that of the (separate entity...) Eurozone.