Жон Ло: Шотланд экономисі және қаржы жүйесінің реформаторы

Scottish economist

John Law (pronounced lɑs in French in the traditional approximation of Laws, the colloquial Scottish form of the name; 21 April 1671 – 21 March 1729) was a Scottish French economist who distinguished money, a means of exchange, from national wealth dependent on trade. He served as Controller General of Finances under the Duke of Orleans, who was regent for the juvenile Louis XV of France. In 1716, Law set up a private Banque Générale in France. A year later it was nationalised at his request and renamed as Banque Royale. The private bank had been funded mainly by John Law and Louis XV; three quarters of its capital consisted of government bills and government accepted notes, effectively making it the nation's first central bank. Backed only partially by silver, it was a fractional reserve bank. Law also set up and directed the Mississippi Company, funded by the Banque Royale. Its chaotic collapse has been compared to the 17th century tulip mania parable in Holland. and the real bills doctrine. He held that money creation stimulated an economy, paper money was preferable to metal, and dividend paying shares a superior form of money. The term "millionaire" was coined for beneficiaries of Law's scheme.

Law was born into a family of Lowland Scots bankers and goldsmiths from Fife; his father, William, had purchased Lauriston Castle, a landed estate at Cramond on the Firth of Forth and was known as Law of Lauriston. On leaving the High School of Edinburgh, Law joined the family business at the age of 14 and studied the banking business until his father died in 1688. He subsequently neglected the firm in favour of extravagant pursuits and travelled to London, where he lost large sums by gambling. On 9 April 1694, John Law fought a duel with another British dandy, Edward "Beau" Wilson, in Bloomsbury Square, London. Wilson had challenged Law over the affections of Elizabeth Villiers. Law killed Wilson with a single pass and thrust of his sword. which foreshadowed the ideas he would propose for establishing new systems of finance, paper money and refinancing the national debt in a subsequent tract entitled Money and Trade Considered: with a Proposal for Supplying the Nation with Money (1705). Law's propositions of creating a national bank in Scotland were ultimately rejected, and he left to pursue his ambitions abroad. He spent ten years moving between France and the Netherlands, dealing in financial speculations. Problems with 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. He would create a bank for national finance and a state company for commerce, ultimately to 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 council called to consider Law's proposal, including financiers such as Samuel Bernard, rejected the proposition on 24 October 1715.

The wars waged by Louis XIV left the country completely wasted, both economically and financially. The resultant shortage of precious metals led to a shortage of coins in circulation, which in turn limited the production of new coins. With the death of Louis XIV seventeen months after Law's arrival, the Duke of Orleans finally presented Law with the opportunity to display his ingenuity. Since, following the devastating War of the Spanish Succession, France's economy was stagnant and her national debt was crippling, Law proposed to stimulate industry by replacing gold with paper credit and then increasing the supply of credit, and to reduce the national debt by replacing it with shares in economic ventures. On 1 May 1716, Law presented a modified version of his centralised bank plan to the Banque Générale which approved a private bank that allowed investors to supply one fourth of an investment in currency and the other parts in defunct government bonds. The second key feature of the proposal centred on the premise that this private bank was able to issue its own currency backed by Louis d'or. This enabled the currency to be redeemed by the weight of silver from the original deposit instead of the fluctuating value of the livre, which had been devaluing rapidly. In May 1716 Law set up the Banque Générale Privée ("General Private Bank") in the rue Quincampoix in Paris, which developed the use of paper money. It was one of only six such banks to have issued paper money in Europe, joining Sweden, England, Holland, Venice, and Genoa. The bank was nationalised in December 1718 at Law's request. Law helped in 1719 to refinance the French Indies companies. His nephew, Jean Law de Lauriston, was later Governor General of Pondicherry.

Law moved to Brussels on 22 December 1720 in impoverished circumstances when his properties in France were voluntarily confiscated. In 1864 William Harrison Ainsworth published the novel John Law based on his career. John Law is the focus of Rafael Sabatini’s 1949 novel The Gamester. John Law is referenced in Voltaire’s 'Dictionnaire Philosophique', as part of the entry on reason. John Law is the subject of the section entitled "Fragment d'un ancien mythologiste" in "Lettre CXLII" of Montesquieu’s epistolary novel "Lettres Persanes" published in 1721.

A collection of early eighteenth century political propagandist pamphlets documenting the hysteria surrounding John Law's return to Britain after the collapse of his Mississippi Scheme and expulsion from France. It also contains a very useful chronology and extensive biographical introduction to John Law and the Mississippi Scheme. Includes the entire first lecture on the life of John Law to be delivered by the author at Law's ancestral home of Lauriston Castle, and other accounts of John Law's life and the Mississippi Scheme by some of the most popular writers of the last 250 years, including: Bram Stoker; Washington Irving, Charles Mackay; Adam Smith; and Voltaire. A biography/memoir of John Law's life and how he built his way to becoming an "economist abroad" in France, yet oversaw a debilitating bank run/financial crisis in the early 18th century. Contains Defoe's contemporary accounts of the euphoria and excess of the first ever stock market boom unleashed by John Law and his Mississippi Scheme and his remarkable insight into the European economic crises of the 1720s. It includes: The Chimera (1720), The Case of Mr. Law Truly Stated (1721), and Selected Journalism (1719–1722). US edition: Millionaire: The Philanderer, Gambler, and Duelist Who Invented Modern Finance (2001). New York: Simon & Schuster. A post war account of John Law. Lanchester, John, "The Invention of Money: How the heresies of two bankers became the basis of our modern economy", The New Yorker, 5 & 12 August 2019, pp. 28–31. A negative account of John Law. The most extensive account of Law's writings. It is given credit for restoring the reputation of Law as an important economic theorist. Pollard, S. (September 1953). "John Law and the Mississippi Bubble". History Today 3#9 pp. 622–630. An account of the euphoria and wealth John Law created by engineering the first stock market boom, and the despair, poverty and destroyed lives that followed its crash. Velde, Francois R. (2003). Government Equity and Money: John Law's System in 1720 France. Available at SSRN: Government Equity and Money: John Law's System in 1720 France or .

LM Shakespeare (2023). Monsieur Law. ISBN B0C6GZKF2J. France, following the death of Louis XIV, was bankrupt, but into the court of the Regent there arrived a Scot called John Law, whose courage combined with a brilliant financial intellect briefly fired the whole country with a wild excitement which very nearly succeeded. This is history in the genre of Munich and Wolf Hall. A contemporary satire on the financial crisis in 1720. A fictionalised biography. A sympathetic fictionalised account of Law's career as financial adviser to the Duke of Orléans, Regent under Louis XV. A costume drama based on John Law's life.