Anglo-American loan

[1] The loan was negotiated by British economist John Maynard Keynes and American diplomat William L. Clayton.

[2] The UK therefore relied on Lend-Lease imports to obtain essential consumer commodities such as food while it could no longer afford to pay for these items using export profits.

Lend-lease items retained were sold to Britain at the knockdown price of about 10 cents on the dollar, giving an initial value of £1.075 billion.

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.

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.

[11] 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.

[15] After this final payment Britain's Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Ed Balls, formally thanked the US for its wartime support.