Joseph Stiglitz ripped IMF to shreds 15 years ago for the austerity BS. He asked them why they did a whole range of policies that wrecked asian economies after the 1998 Asian meltdown and the only answer was "that's what we always tell them to do". Basically they tell you to tighten your belt and sell everything off, while eliminating all barriers to foreign ownership, regardless of what the actual circumstances are like in a per-country basis. In fact, the asian meltdown occurred in part because IMF previously pushed financial deregulation on Asia in the decade before that, which made things like dependence on foreign capital more intense, and made it easier for capital flight to exacerbate any economic hiccup. In other words, they have their own agenda (which is about opening up markets to corporate investors, and bailing out same investors if things subsequently collapse) and always push same policies regardless of the specific circumstances of any country. They're still doing the same shit the same way almost 20 years after Stiglitz (who was chief economist of the World Bank) called them out for that behavior.
As you probably notice, the successful countries don't actually operate the way the IMF tells you to do things, although they pull the strings of the IMF. It's a case of "do as we tell you, not as we do!" A common sense approach is to save in the good years, spend in the bad years. The only problem is that it's not politically expedient to pull the brakes on government spending during the boom years. But it's something that really needs to happen.