A closer look
Exiled Scottish gambler John Law somehow convinced the absolute monarch of France to let him establish a massive central bank in 1716 and tie the national currency directly to the fictional profits of the Mississippi Company. He aggressively peddled shares of heavily exaggerated colonial swampland in North America to desperately greedy Parisian aristocrats, intentionally sparking an absolutely massive speculative frenzy that skyrocketed the stock price. When the wealthy investors eventually realized that Louisiana was mostly just filled with deadly mosquitoes and angry alligators rather than mountains of solid gold, the entire national economy completely collapsed in days. Law had to immediately flee the angry French mobs disguised in drag, proving that elite finance bros have always been completely unhinged con artists
