Keynes challenged the expectation that an economy necessarily returns quickly to full employment
through ordinary adjustment. Demand, expectations and investment became central to the policy debate. Key assumption: inadequate aggregate demand can sustain unemployment. Assessment: influential and supported in relevant circumstances; the size and timing of policy effects depend on conditions. Key mechanism: public action can support demand when private activity is insufficient. Assessment: conditional on capacity, financing, implementation and the nature of the shock. The 3rd Economics critique: does managing demand within an existing monetary structure relieve distress while leaving the structure of dependence intact? That is our question, not a quotation or a proposition automatically established by Keynes’s work. Keynes’s proposed bancor was part of an international clearing arrangement; it should not be misrepresented as a plan to replace every domestic currency with one world currency. Our test: compare demand support under different credit and settlement structures, measuring recovery, inflation, access and concentration.