One economist convinced France that paper money backed by a swamp was worth more than gold

In 1720, Scottish financier John Law ran France's central bank and the Mississippi Company, printing paper money backed by wildly exaggerated claims about Louisiana's wealth. Share prices rocketed roughly 20-fold in a year before collapsing entirely, wiping out investors and discrediting paper currency in France for generations. It remains one of history's starkest examples of a state-engineered financial bubble.

— Contemporary French financial records, Mississippi Company — France, 1719-1720