Millionaire: The Philanderer, Gambler and Duelist Who Invented Modern Finance
JanetÂGleeson
Hardcover - Bargain, JuneÂ2000
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Product Details:
ISBN: 0641555539
Format: Hardcover, 304pp
Pub. Date: JuneÂ2000Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
Edition Description: Bargain
Barnes & Noble Sales Rank: 290
ÂFrom the Publisher
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. Already notorious for killing a man in a duel and for acquiring a huge fortune from gambling, 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. In August 1717, he founded the Mississippi Company, and the Court granted him the right to trade in France's vast territory in America. 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. Her enthralling tragicomic tale reveals two great characters: John Law, with his complex personality and inscrutable motives, and money itself, whose true nature even to this day remains elusive.
ÂFrom The Critics
Mark Frankel - BusinessWeek
Thoroughly researched, Millionaire is a marvelous read that animates its flawed hero while intelligently illuminating his time.
Library Journal
In a marvelous follow-up to The Arcanum, Gleeson tells the story of "Jessamy John" Law, a brilliant mathematician, author, banker, womanizer, and killer who was condemned to die, escaped from prison, and rose to superstardom as France's financial controller. The problem he faced, much as we do today, was how to maintain public confidence in a credit-based financial system that relied implicitly on intrinsically valueless money. His bank, the Banque Royale, was the first national bank in France to rely on the issue of paper money to build its advantage. His organization, the Compagnie d'Occident, or Mississippi Company, sparked the first major international stock-market boom and bust by promising a field of drams based on the unexplored riches of the Mississippi River Valley. The author's short epilog provides relevance by noting the lasting effects of John Law's system and the still-present tools of instability that underlie today's financial markets. Gleeson tells the story of this flawed, brilliant man in the context of his time. Recommended for public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/00.]-Norman B. Hutcherson, Kern Cty. Lib., Bakersfield, CA
Diana B. Henriques - The New York Times Book Review
Her obvious passion for her story carries the reader along from crisis to crisis, and her eye for sensual detail allows her to recreate vividly the opulent world of French regency society.
The New Yorker
Gleeson is a gifted biographer whose book reminds us that finance is a passionate as well as a rational endeavor.
Kirkus Reviews
An engaging, enlightening biography of the Scottish financial genius Law (1671-1729), whose innovations created for 18th-century France a remarkable but evanescent economic boom. Gleeson (The Arcanum, 1999) is a storyteller with uncommon gifts: here he unsnarls the complicated tale of a complex man who revolutionized the way people think about money. The son of a prominent goldsmith in Edinburgh, Law showed early promise in fencing and tennisâbut most notable were his formidable mathematical talents, which enabled him to profit substantially from a variety of games of chance. In 1694, however, he killed the son of a powerful London family in a duel and soon found himself convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. Friends arranged for his escape, and he crossed the Channel to the Continent, where he began life anew. In Genoa, he eloped with another man's wife. In the Hague, he befriended a nephew of Louis XIVâa connection that would eventually result in his rise to the top of the French financial bureaucracy and make him "the richest subject in Europe." With lucent wit, Gleeson chronicles Law's rise and fall. Most intriguing are her accounts of his creation of the Mississippi Company, a stock venture that generated one of history's greatest boom-and-bust stories. Law, who had already convinced the French government to begin issuing paper money (to compensate for the critical shortage of coins and precious metal), sold shares in France's holdings in America. Soon people from all walks of life made enormous fortunes as the price of the stock skyrocketed (occasioning a new wordâ"millionaire"). But all collapsed when word spread that nolargedeposits of gold or silver had been found in the New World. During one of the ensuing "runs" on the banks, a dozen people died, trampled underfoot by the stampede of fearful depositors eager to reclaim their investments. Law, his life at risk, fled the country in disgrace and died broke in Venice. A brilliant cautionary tale whose relevance to the volatile economies of today is remarkableâand alarming.
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Donald Mitchell ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), a management consultant from Boston, AprilÂ24,Â2001,
Economic Visions
This book shows the background of the attempts by John Law to create a better monetary base for France. The ideas he pursued were doomed by political interventions, and France was left worse off than before. The surrounding scandal rocked the Continent. The book also provides many insights into how political influence on national economics can be developed and exercised. The book is enlivened by many interesting details of John Law's life. How did a Scotsman with a mixed reputation come to be the prime mover in French economics? That would never happen today. You will be fascinated by this tale of how difficulties make for strange political accommodations. Based on this biography of John Law, the real character of the man remains somewhat murky. While this book tells us a lot about the effects he created on the lives of others, what other people had to say about him, and what his environment was like, we get a limited sense of the man himself. Little is recorded of his writing or conversations in this book. In this sense, he reminds me a little of Howard Hughes. What is most clear is that John Law made both his successes and his failures through his persuasiveness (he sought the ear of powerful people, not the other way around) and his personality faults (he was clearly reckless in many ways -- killing a man in a duel, pushing the implementation of his financial schemes too aggressively, and being overly friendly with married ladies). The book glosses over what John Law did that was deliberately harmful in some cases (sending people by force to Louisiana after it was known that a high percentage of the people arriving there died of disease, publishing glowing reports based on no shred of reality about Louisiana to encourage investments, and going along with printing vastly too much paper currency knowing that this would backfire). For a man who came from a Scottish family of clerics, he was amazingly immoral. The ideas he advanced about paper money were pretty simply based on the earlier successful development of such bank-based currency in England. The Mississippi Company scheme was not too much different from an earlier one that had almost bankrupted Scotland involving Panama. Like many innovators, he was taking experience from one country and simply transplanting into another one. Although much is made in the book about him learning the laws of statistics so he could make the gaming odds run in his favor, he clearly took outlandish risks in other areas throughout his life. That is a fascinating insight into his character. I see the man through this book more as sinner than saint. Clearly, his concepts would have eventually been used in France without him. Perhaps pushed by a more responsible person, these concepts would have worked and France would have had better economic development in the 18th century. Clearly, he got his just deserts because he died penniless in terms of cash, and hounded by his enemies. Overcome your misconception that every pioneer is a great woman or man by learning about John Law. Sometimes, they were just one of the first. When the history of the early Internet age is written in a few years, who will be our John Law? Think about it! Your answer may save (or even make) you a fortune! Look for the character behind the new idea. Donald Mitchell, co-author of The Irresistible Growth Enterprise and The 2,000 Percent Solution
Peter Cassimatis, New York, Professor Emeritus of Economics, JanuaryÂ2,Â2001,
A Cautionary Tale of Irrational Exuberance in the 18th Century.
This is a fascinating biography of John Law, 1671-1729, who made a fortune in gambling, then fled England after killing a man in a duel, and settled in Paris where he advocated issuing paper money and set the stage for the first major speculative market, but managed to survive its inevitable collapse. In the process, he and his admirers became rich and the term 'millionaire' was coined. Even Voltaire was impressed. Janet Gleeson has done a superb job in describing John Law's adventures. Despite numerous setbacks and failures, Law persevered towards his objectives which were to become rich, befriend the royal court, and influence the financial policies of empires: English, French, whatever. Gleeson skillfully explains that although Law established a private bank in Paris, which became the state bank, and the Mississippi Company, he failed to anticipate the inflation and the collapse that followed. He escaped to Venice where he died broke.
Also recommended:ÂRobert Shiller: Irrational Exuberance. David Brooks: Bobos in Paradice.
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