I think that it's an interesting lens through which to view policy. But yeah, I see little evidence that it provides any useful conclusions that are different from standard Keynesianism.
The 1976 bailout occurred during the transition of the IMF and the global monetary system from Bretton Woods, where its primary role was to fix exchange rates to the USD and negotiate devaluations, to its new role of providing loans on condition of structural adjustment. I don't really understand why the UK needed that bailout
We did not need it. As Innonimatu indicates, a bailout from the IMF was seen as politically better than a devaluation.
In this our Prime Minister then, James Callaghan, was quite wrong and in part lost the 1979 election necause it.
A similar thing occurred with John Major who decided to hold the pound targetting the ERM and lost the 1997 election in part because of it.
- it seems to have been issued mostly to ward off speculative attack, but even if that happened, why couldn't the Brits just ride through it like they did in 1992? Did the UK public or private sectors have large amounts of dollar-denominated debt at the time?
The UK was burdened with unpaid war debt to the USA in both 1976 and 1992. But that was not the reason.
Or was everyone still not used to a world of floating exchange rates, and devaluation was seen as much worse then than it is now?
Yes; that was true. But also.
The rich people in the UK held their money in sterling and no they did not want to see it devalued.
And governments do what the rich people want.
I don't really understand why the world had so much more inflation in the 1970s than it does today. Back then, it was fairly common for developed countries to have double-digit inflation and developing countries to have high double-digit, triple-digit, or worse inflation. Was it just that the monetarists hadn't taken over the world yet and fiscal+monetary policies were more devoted to full employment than they are now, plus a bit of a shock from oil prices as a secondary factor? Or was there more going on? It's strange that high inflation used to be really common, but now a country has to be as mismanaged as Venezuela or Zimbabwe for hyperinflation to happen, and that developed countries can't seem to generate much inflation even when they try, short of doing anything truly insane.
In the 1960s and 1970s there was competition in the UK between trade union leaders as to who could get the largest pay rise for their members.
They correctly assumed that employers could put prices up and government raise taxes, but they forgot about loss of international competitiveness.
Another thing that is forgotten is that most workers were paid in cash, and fewer had banking or credit facilities so there was less ability and because
of full employment less perceived need, to save wages: so a small increase in wages resulted in a cascade in the amount of money going round and infation.
It is difficult for people to understand now but in the 1960s nuclear war was a larger perceived threat to full employment (and savings) than a recession.
There are different types of inflation. Some types such as excess property prices are not reflected in official statistics
particularly when central banks are suppressing interest rates and therefore the amount being paid to service mortgages.
An odd thing going on now is that although UK rents have been experiencing rapid inflation, officially UK inflation was, prior to the recent exchange rate slump, minimal.