By the summer a run on the pound was threatened. Continental banks, who had been buying pounds, now announced that they had enough of a stockpile (£300m) and the Treasury demanded cuts of £300m in demand and a cancellation of the raising of the surtax threshold – the latter was a politically impossible demand. Some ministers suggested floating the pound, an option which Macmillan discussed in his diary on 23 July, although he rejected it as it would have irritated the Americans and would have had to be accompanied by deflation. In fact the balance of payments was already moving back into surplus, but based on out-of-date Treasury figures ("last year's Bradshaw" as Macmillan once famously quipped) Lloyd announced a package of measures on 25 July: bank rate was raised to 7%, public spending was cut, and $1.5bn was borrowed from the IMF, along with conditions, although not as strict as the IMF would have liked. Macmillan wrote to ministers on 28 July ordering public spending restraint. Lloyd refused to use his power to increase Employers' NICs in the July measures, saying it was "a dead rat". Cairncross, who had succeeded Robert Hall as the government's economic advisor, believed that Lloyd might have given some kind of private promise not to actually use it.