On this day in 1729, John Law, the Scottish economist, died.
In his best known work, Money and Trade Considered with a Proposal for Supplying the Nation With Money, he argued that increased money supply resulted in an expanding, healthy economy. Rejected in Britain, he moved to France where the government, deep in debt, adopted his plans to develop its vast territories in North America with disastrous results. The resulting financial disaster became known as the "Mississippi bubble" and had such an enormous impact on France that it would be 80 years before France would again introduce paper money into its economy.
