John Law and the Mississippi Bubble: France's First Financial Collapse

Podcast: The Fraud Archive Dialogues · The Archive Network

Opublikowano: 2026-10-13

Picture a stranger in a city desperate for cash—armed with numbers, charm, and the wild idea that wealth could be conjured from trust alone. What happens when a gambler promises to save a kingdom by making paper into gold?John Law was no ordinary banker. Born in Edinburgh in sixteen seventy-one, he grew up watching his father, a goldsmith, handle other people’s fortunes. Law understood money—he also understood risk. He believed that wealth wasn’t just metal in a vault, but something shaped by confidence. When France staggered at the end of Louis the Fourteenth’s reign—broke from w...