L'uomo che invento' il denaro

by Janet Gleeson

On the death of France's most glorious king, Louis XIV, in 1715, few people benefited from the shift in power more than the intriguing financial genius from Edinburgh, John Law. Law had proposed to the English monarch that a bank be established to issue paper money with the credit based on the value of land. But Queen Anne was not about to take advice from a gambler and felon. So, in exile in Paris, he convinced the bankrupt court of Louis XV of the value of his idea. Law soon engineered the revival of the French economy and found himself one of the most powerful men in Europe. The shareholders in his new trading company made such enormous profits that the term millionaire was coined to describe them. Paris was soon in a frenzy of speculation, conspiracies, and insatiable consumption. Before this first boom-and-bust cycle was complete, markets throughout Europe crashed, the mob began calling for Law's head, and his visionary ideas about what money could do were abandoned and forgotten. In Millionaire, Janet Gleeson lucidly reconstructs this epic drama where fortunes were made and lost, paupers grew rich, and lords fell into penury--and a modern fiscal philosophy was born.

Genres: History, Biography, Economics, Nonfiction, Finance, Business, France

318 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Janet Gleeson was born in Sri Lanka and has a degree in both art history and English. She has worked at Sotheby's, as well as at Bonham's Auctioneers, where she headed the Old Master Painting Department. A former art and antiques correspondent for House and Garden and editor for Reed Books, Janet Gleeson has contributed articles to numerous publications, including The Antiques Collector, Country Life, and Apollo.

Reviews

[Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a little weary of going into this book as even though the blurb and title sounded very interesting but a book like this can easily feel more acidemia and dusty but I shouldn't had worried. Such an interesting story and was not dust at all

[Daphne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is completely the type of biography I wouldn't normally pick up. I bought it on a whim from Amazon, and was REALLY glad I did. Not only is Jon Law incredibly interesting in himself, but the people surrounding him were just as fascinating. The author does a superb job of telling the story without flourish, but keeping it constantly interesting. I absolutely abhor history/biography books that are 50% or more conjecture. It means that you never once can actually believe the author, and so you truly have no idea how much you actually learned about the subject of the book. Then you hate using even a bit of the information when discussing things with others because you don't know if the thing you think you know is a fact or something the author recreated in their own mind. This book has none of that junk.

Absolute bonus points for this book because the author obviously knows her Voltaire. She intersperses quotes and references from Voltaire's own work throughout, and I could tell she leaned heavily on him when creating this biography.

[George Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Moneymaker is a fantastic story, it really should be made into a movie. It will teach you more economics than most economics text books with much less effort. For anyone wanting to understand money and financial instability this is a good place to start.

[Benedict Reid · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is interesting. But it's not really engaging. And I felt that the details overwhelmed the main thread of the story. To be honest, it read like a publish PhD.

[globulon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a decent read but not the most exciting book.

The general view Gleeson takes of Law is quite positive. This seems to have been a result of gradually changing opinion of Law in various studies of his life over the time from when he lived to now. As far as I understand it, not having read any other sources except wikipedia, Law was basically seen as a villian, clever but thoroughly dishonest, for some time after his life. Then gradually the biographies and studies began to take a more positive tone. This book hews close to the idea that Law's tragic flaw was that he was an idealist in the sense that he didn't take other peoples weaknesses seriously enough. Gleeson doesn't provide a whole lot of concrete evidence for her view of the man. I realize that this was a popular and not an academic biography but it still seems that if you are going to present a contentious view of a person you should do a little more work arguing your case. Gleeson often will say things to the effect of "He must have felt awful about this...". I understand the urge of the biographer to get inside their subjects head, and I would rather read a positive biography than a negative one, but I felt fairly skeptical in the end.

Another aspect of the biography that was a little weak was just the feeling that you don't get very close to Law himself. He always seemed pretty distant to me while I was reading. To be fair to Gleeson this may have had to do with a dearth of documentary evidence.

On the other hand, despite her generally warm appraisal of Law, she seemed to me to do a decent job presenting the whole mess of the Mississippi bubble in all it's nastiness. One thing that amazed me was the fact that as opposed to the American stock bubble, this French one was forced on the people by the law itself. Law as minister of finance was able to pass laws requiring people to invest in his bank which was the first part of the whole system. Admittedly the stock frenzy was mostly voluntary, but the whole fact of forcing people into the paper currency which became worthless as a result of the fiasco means that it was basically impossible to be smart about it. That is there was no real escape either due to your own wisdom or to luck. Furthermore, in the name of the stock values people were wholesale deported to Louisiana. They actually also passed laws prohibiting people from buying things like gold and silver or other luxury items in order to force them to keep their wealth in the paper currency. All of this has a certain logic from the point of view of propping up the value of the currency but seems quite ruthless given what happened. There are more examples of this sort.

All in all it was a interesting and worthwhile read.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

France in 1700's tries an experiment under the direction of John Law (a Scotsman) with paper money backed by deposited coins (but not completely)...and it all falls apart due to over inflated stock prices and frenzy over making scads of money easily....it sounds like just yesterday.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great reading the daily train commute I was taking at the time; eighteenth century history is not for everyone, but I found this book fascinating- a glimpse into the world of speculation.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating story and life.

A reminder of how bubbles haven’t really changed and are driven by psychology and human behaviour over everything.

Also interesting study on the beginnings of the move away from metal currency, the reasons for change and ultimately why trust is so important behind any currency.

[Harsh Thaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chronicle on the man who wanted financial utopia.. wherein his system was right but as always the never changing human nature of greed & fear got better of it. John's system has left an indelible mark on the finance & economics as we know today. Highly recommend for anyone interested in finance.

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating story about a supremely interesting human being.

[Carl Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An engaging biography of John Law, who pioneered central banking, paper money, stock market options, and buying on margin.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suspect that this story loses something if the raeder does not have a grasp on banking and trading. Absent the time frame, one could deduce that nothing has changed. Financial systems still collapse and maverick financiers can still rock governments. One of the author's observations rings true today, and that is:

....people's desire to make as much money for as little effort as possible, their instinct to follow the heard, to hoard when threatened, to panic  if confidence is shaken. 

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was much more enjoyable than I thought it would be. It covered some very complex topics (finance, politics, etc) with interesting prose, and with the feel of an actual story. It managed to stay away from being dry or boring, and yet is very well researched, true to the facts, and does a good job of staying away from supposition or falsehood.

[Antonio Fanelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

La solita bolla speculativa che torna costantemente nel corso del tempo in varie forme ma sempre con le stesse modalità.
Oltre alla solita storia, racconta naturalmente il protagonista John Law, l'inventore dell'economia moderna in tutti i suoi lati positivi e negativi.
Un uomo e il suo sogno e la passione con cui l'ha perseguito e un affresco dell'epoca che concede poco alla fantasia.

[Terri London Mabel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just wasn't doing it for me--stopped reading.

[Erik Graff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked this up at the Hayward, Wisconsin Public Library. It's short but, for me, it was disappointing. First, it wasn't a very thorough biography. One obtains little sense of the personalities of either his children or his commonlaw wife and the sense obtained of Law himself is vague. On the one hand, there's the gambler, on the other there's the putative public servant who ruined the French economy. Was he a narcissistic adventurer seeking personal gain and glory or was he a misguided philanthropist? The author comes to no clear conclusion and would seem to want to have it both ways, leaving John Law a bit of an enigma. That may indeed be what the record allows. I found it unsatisfying.

Beyond its biographical aspect this is also a book about economics, about political economy. Here I found the descriptions of Law's handling of the French money supply to be too sketchy and the descriptions of his (and the government's) attempts to control the disaster which followed the boom to be virtually too outrageous to be believed. It may have been quite as author Gleeson described, but her descriptions were, to my sense, inadequately convincing. However, if I had known more about early 18th century French history I may have had less objection.

[mein.buecherregal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Der Mann, der das Geld erfand von Janet Gleeson aus dem #kremayrundscheriau Verlag
💷
Dieses Sachbuch ist eine Biografie über John Law.
.
Biografien und ich werden nie ganz auf einer Wellenlänge sein. Meistens entwickelt sich kein einfacher Lesefluss. Durch Zitate, Bruchstücke, Vermutungen und Zeitzeugen ergibt sich zwar ein gutes Bild von einem vergangenen Leben, aber holprig beim Lesen.
.
So war es auch bei diesem Buch. Holprig ja. Aber auch sehr interessant. John Law sagte mir vor diesem #sachbuch gar nichts, nun frage ich mich, warum er mir bisher nie „über den Weg gelaufen“ ist.
.
In diesem Buch geht es um Wirtschaft, die ersten Aktiengesellschaften, die ersten Spekulationen, um altes Münzgeld und neues Papiergeld. Um Aufstieg und Fall eines Menschen, einer Bank und einer Wirtschaft.
.
Aber es ist nicht nur eine Art von Wirtschaftskrimi, der hier erzählt wird. Es ist auch ein historisches Sittengemälde. Einblicke in eine andere Zeit.
.
Erstaunt war ich, dass es eine Erzählung von lang vergangenen Zeiten ist, aber mit manch ähnlicher aktueller Begebenheit.
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Das Buch habe ich durch Zufall entdeckt. Mich durch die (für mich) manchmal holprige Erzählung gearbeitet und nicht bereut.
.
Würde das Buch aber trotz historisch interessanter Geschichte am liebsten Menschen ans Herz legen, die sich mit den Themen Geld, Aktien, Wirtschaft und Ähnlichem wohl fühlen.

[Canlit4ever · Rating 3 out of 5]

The cover review says in part "animates its flawed hero while illuminating his time". That is a perhaps generous take. It is not a bad book, but I did not find it a compelling read and struggled to finish it. I think it was somewhat unfortunate that the gambling and philandering was used as a kind of click bait to garner interest. I did not give two hoots about the ponderous level of detail that went into that aspect of his life, and I think it detracted from what could have been a more contextualized appreciation of what the Mississippi Company debacle meant within the history of banking. The book is very much a biography of one man rather than the significance of that man's major achievements/failures within the context of history. Who he was screwing as a young man and what his landlady thought about it neither particularly helped animate Law nor did it add to the significant place Law had in developing systems of paper currencies. I would have liked more about the transition to paper currencies generally.

[Sharmila Tilwalli Athanikar · Rating 4 out of 5]

We take paper money and our credit economy for granted. We take our banking system for granted.
Circa 1700, there was no paper money!!! Gold, silver, copper and other commodities were used as means of exchange. The amount of money in circulation depended on physical limitations. Amount of money in circulation was limited to amount of national wealth. Transition to paper money was tumultuous. And the world had to bear this painful transition. If people like John Law didn't have the courage to make those mistakes, world would have been a very different place today. My intention is not to defend his shortcomings. He had many, however the vision of people like him is what made our economy what it is today. Like most visionary, he was an idealist. He ignored human weaknesses and architected a system with no negative-testing and with no regulations. The "if-onlys" are our regulations of today. Some point in future, I plan on re-reading this book to comb through nuances of his system.

[Vanessa Princessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book thanks to Blinkist.

The key message in this book:

The use of paper money as a cornerstone of modern economic systems has its roots in ideas first put forth by John Law. Law’s life story shows not only the downsides of modern economic systems based on paper money, but also its inherent value. While paper money can trigger economic booms, rapid downturns and economic chaos, modern economies would not run nearly as smoothly without it.

Suggested further reading:

The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

The Wealth of Nations is a profoundly influential work in the study of economics and examines exactly how nations become wealthy. Adam Smith advocates that by allowing individuals to freely pursue their own self-interest in a free market, without government regulation, nations will prosper.

[Lance · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging, well written, and well structured look into the tumultuous but fascinating life of John Law, an 18th century economic visionary whose (for the time) radical ideas around monetary supply briefly transformed the French economy.

Having an interest in both finance and history, Gleeson's book was thoroughly entertaining for me. While Law, his character, and the events surrounding his life are the focus of the book, I appreciated the brief snippets of insight and examination afforded to the economic theories and proposals Law espoused.

The author's conclusion is also rather poignant in drawing a relative line of continuity from the economics of Law's day and how things are in the modern world.

I'd gladly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in finance, European economic and political history, or biography. A great read overall.

[Kyle Macleod · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was quite concerned when I started reading this that it would be exactly the type of biographical writing that I tend to find boring, but was pleasantly surprised that it is as much a history of late 17th/ early 18th century Europe and it’s fiscal affairs as it is about the man himself. I particularly liked learning about the Mississippi company and the financial woes of France in this period.

[Andrea Valgoi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una biografia interessantissima, e di facile e veloce lettura.
Testo molto scorrevole, si divora una pagina dietro l'altra.

Interessante come il primo esperimento di politica monetaria su larga scala si sia dimostrato un enorme fallimento e nonostante ciò ora il sistema descritto nel libro è lo stesso in uso nelle più importanti economie democratiche occidentali.

[Sydney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really engaging history of the boom and bust of the French economy in the early 18th century as orchestrated by John Law. The author seems to think that John law could do no wrong, so the descriptions of his character are flowery and he is given every benefit of every doubt, but it’s a good overview of events and told in a really interesting way.

[Ronan Murray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thorough account of the fascinating life Mr Law who lifted France from financial ruin by introducing paper money only for the system to fail and plunge France back into despair. Gives a good insight into what 18th century France/Paris was like.

[Vinayak Malik · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man and an idea ahead of it's time

[Blasr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Undoubtedly well-researched, but there appear to be many books about John Law, so not sure why this one was needed. Not the ideal book to have taken on holiday.

[Thomas]

To read: Ch 8 & 13 (Chanos recommendation)

[David Liang · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book about the life of John Law. It's very straight forward and chronological.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written historical account of how money in form of notes came to be, as we enter yet another new (Covid-driven) age of contactless transactions.