Paying off the national debt with the population
Food exported to service debt, two hours of electricity, and Decree 770.
What happened
To clear roughly $10 billion of foreign debt, Ceaușescu exported Romania's food and fuel and rationed what was left. Households got heat and electricity for a couple of hours a day; queues for basic food were routine. Decree 770 had already banned abortion and contraception in 1966 to force up the birth rate, filling the state orphanages.
The results
The debt was paid off in mid-1989. The regime fell in December, and Ceaușescu was executed by firing squad. The people who paid for the austerity had no way, until the very end, to say no.
Why it happened
This is austerity imposed by a ruler who could not be voted out, enforced by the Securitate and — in the case of the birth policy — by mandatory gynaecological examination at work. The purpose was the regime's balance sheet and the ruler's vanity, pursued regardless of human cost, because nothing — no election, no press, no court — could make that cost register.