John Law and the Mississippi Bubble

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2021-06-14 04:00:08

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People in Paris were getting rich — and they were getting rich fast. In fact, it was so hard to describe how rich everyone was becoming that a new word was needed and the term “millionaire” was coined in 1719.

The people of France could thank a Scotsman with a penchant for gambling, the printing of new paper money, and all the vast riches that surely would be found in the New World for their sudden wealth.

Born in 1671, Law grew up in Edinburgh in a well-to-do family, his father being a goldsmith with enough money to buy a castle that the family would never live in just to say that he had one. His father was also a financier/private banker, and at the age of 14, Law joined his father’s business. An innate aptitude for mathematics and an interest in studying economics led to him quickly picking up the principles of banking before his father died three years later. His mother took control over the business, and being a wealthy young man…

…he withdrew entirely from the desk, which had become so irksome, and being possessed of the revenues of the paternal estate of Lauriston, he proceeded to London, to see the world…