John Law: The Lord of Paper Money (Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries)

John Law was not just a Scottish adventurer who dueled for the sake of the honor of a woman and thereby killed his opponent, causing him to fly out of London, but also an economist who exploited paper money while using the Royal Bank and the Mississippi company, to recover state finances and to fuel the French economy. Alas, the associated money creation ended in the Mississippi Company bubble around a state-led investment project in North America, in 1720, much akin to a comparable failed British project, the South Sea Company bubble. It made the bankers distrusted in France.