This is only tangentially a partial answer or side note to your question but it's one of my favorite historical anecdotes so I hope you don't mind me sharing it.

In 1876 Egypt basically went bankrupt and the French and British exercised joint direct control of Egypt's finances under a system called the Caisse de la Dette which basically saw France and Britain effectively take over the administration of the country and which would eventually culminate in the British occupying the country completely by military force in 1882.

One of the tasks of the Caisse de la Dette was to institute austerity measures, which mostly involved ending the various modernization programs and initiatives put in place by Egypt's ruler, Ismail Pasha, some of which were quite extravagant and expensive.

Ismail Pasha it turned out, had funded not only a telegraph line into Egypt but was also paying a Reuters wire service subscription for the country which cost something on the order of a couple thousand pounds (an enormous sum at the time) for a country with very high rates of illiteracy and no real need for that service.

But when it was suggested to the British members of the Caisse de la Dette that they consider cancelling this subscription as an austerity measure, this was rejected on the grounds that it would make it impossible to get up-to-date betting odds on the Oxford and Cambridge boat race.