John Law (economist)
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John Law (bap. 21 April 1671 - 21 March 1729) was a Scottish economist who believed that money was only a means of exchange that did not constitute wealth in itself, and that national wealth depended on trade. He is said to be the father of finance, responsible for the adoption or use of paper money or bills in the world today.
Law was a gambler and a brilliant mental calculator, and was known to win card games by mentally calculating the odds. An expert in statistics, he was the originator of economic theories, including two major ideas: 'The Scarcity Theory of Value' and 'The Real Bills Doctrine of Money'.
Biography
Law was born into a banking family from Fife; his father had purchased a landed estate at Cramond on the Firth of Forth, and after his death in 1688, Law travelled to London and lost large sums of money in gambling.
On 9 April 1694 John Law fought a duel with Edward Wilson. Wilson had challenged Law over the affections of Elizabeth Villiers. Wilson was killed and Law was tried and found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. His sentenced was commuted to a fine, upon the ground that the offence only amounted to manslaughter. Wilson's brother appealed and had Law imprisoned but he managed to escape to the continent.
Law urged the establishment of a national bank to create and increase instruments of credit, and the issue of paper money backed by land, gold, or silver. The first manifestation of Law's system came when he had returned to his homeland and contributed to the debates leading to the Treaty of Union 1707 with a text entitled Money and Trade Consider'd with a Proposal for Supplying the Nation with Money (1705). After the Union of the Scottish and English parliaments, Law's legal situation obliged him to go into exile again.
He spent ten years moving between France and the Netherlands, dealing in financial speculations, before the problems of the French economy presented the opportunity to put his system into practice.
He had the idea of abolishing minor monopolies and private farming of taxes and creating a bank for national finance and a state company for commerce and ultimately exclude all private revenue. This would create a huge monopoly of finance and trade run by the state, and its profits would pay off the national debt. The French Conseil des Finances, merchants, and financiers objected to this plan.
In May 1716 the Banque Générale ("General Bank") was set up by Law. It was a private bank, but three quarters of the capital consisted of government bills and government accepted notes. In August 1717, he bought the Mississippi Company, to help the French colony in Louisiana. In the same year Law floated the Mississippi Company as a joint-stock trading company called the Compagnie d'Occident which was granted a trade monopoly of the West Indies and North America. The bank became the Royal bank (Banque Royale) in 1718, meaning the notes were guaranteed by the king. The Company absorbed the Compagnie des Indes Orientales, Compagnie de Chine, and other rival trading companies and became the Compagnie Perpetuelle des Indes in 1719. In 1720 the bank and company were united and Law was appointed Controller General of Finances to attract capital. Law's pioneering note-issuing bank was extremely successful until it collapsed and caused an economic crisis in France and Europe.
Law exaggerated the wealth of Louisiana with an effective marketing scheme, which led to wild speculation on the shares of the company in 1719. In February 1720 it was valued for a very high future cash flow at 10,000 livres . Shares rose from 500 livres in 1719 to as much as 15,000 livres in the first half of 1720, but by the summer of 1720, there was a sudden decline in confidence, leading to a 97 per cent decline in market cap by 1721. By the end of 1720 Philippe II of Orléans dismissed Law, who then fled from France.
Law subsequently moved between London and Venice where he contracted pneumonia and died a poor man in 1729.
Books
- Millionaire : The Philanderer, Gambler, and Duelist Who Invented Modern Finance by Janet Gleeson (2000). (ISBN 0684872951)
- Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay. First published 1841, and still available.