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John Law

Original nameJohn Law

Pioneer of paper money and central banking, author of the "Mississippi Bubble"

Those Who Made Wealth Flow · Trade Routes, Money & Banking
Paper MoneyFinancial BubbleFranceCentral Banking

Who they are

A Scottish economist, gambler, and financial adventurer, one of the earliest practitioners of modern paper money and central banking. In early eighteenth-century France, deep in debt, he persuaded the regent to found a state bank issuing paper money and tied it to the "Mississippi Company," which monopolized trade in French Louisiana. He whipped share prices to the sky on the optimism he manufactured, and all France fell into a frenzy of speculation — one of the earliest stock bubbles in history, the "Mississippi Bubble." When it burst, countless were ruined and he fled. He was both a pioneer of the modern financial core idea of "reviving the economy with paper money," and its first victim of madness.

Primary sourcessources on John Law and the Mississippi Bubble

Key stories

The Origin of the Word "Millionaire"

As Mississippi Company shares soared, a crowd of newly rich speculators sprang up overnight in France, and the word "millionaire" is said to have been born just then. But when the bubble burst, paper fortunes evaporated in an instant, and countless "millionaires" were left destitute. With one carnival, John Law proved that paper money and credit can conjure prosperity from nothing — and make it vanish into nothing — a lesson every financial bubble since has repeated.

Relationships

Disciple
💰Jacob Fugger　after the banking dynasties, pushed finance into the new stage of paper money and the stock market

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

The "Mississippi Bubble" and paper-money pioneerJohn Law engineered one of history’s earliest stock bubbles, the "Mississippi Bubble," and pioneered modern paper money and central banking; the word "millionaire" is said to have been born in the frenzy, still the opening case in the history of financial bubbles.
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