Odd Lots - Merryn Talks Money: John Law, The Gambler Who Invented Modern Money (Part 1)

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

Hello Odd Lots listeners! As we take a break for the holidays we'd like to take a moment and bring you an episode by one of our sister shows here at Bloomberg Podcasts, Merryn Talks Money.  In this special two-part series, John Stepek and Merryn Somerset Webb tell the extraordinary story of John Law: a fugitive Scots gambler who became the most powerful financier in France and helped invent the modern monetary system. From murder and exile to paper money, banking revolutions and spectacular collapse, Law’s life reveals why today’s financial system works the way it does—and why it sometimes blows up. It’s history, scandal and monetary theory rolled into one irresistible tale. We used a range of sources for this podcast but two key books to read if you'd like to find out more are:John Law: A Scottish Adventurer of the Eighteenth Century (2018), by James BuchanJohn Law: Economic Theorist and Policy-Maker (1997), by Antoin MurphyLike this episode? Listen and Subscribe to the Merryn Talks Money podcast on Apple, Spotify, iHeart or wherever you get your podcastsOnly Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox — now delivered every weekday — plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlotsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And I'm Tracy Alloway. We hope you're enjoying your holiday season. And we're taking a little break ourselves. So we wanted to bring you an episode from one of our fellow podcasts here at Bloomberg. A special holiday present, if you will. This is from the Marin Talks Money podcast, which is hosted by Marin Somerset Web and John Steppek. And it is all about one of the most interesting historical economic figures, it's John Law. Yeah, that's right. So John Law, 18th century gambler, murder,

economic visionary. Like, I think people say he like is sort of the mind behind fiat currency, as we know it today. So his influence is still felt and check out the episode. We hope you enjoy. Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. Okay, look back through the history of money and quite often it seems like nothing is happening, long, long bits of calm. And then suddenly there's a catalyst of some kind. Stuff changes, right? And you get everything exploding, things flipping, a period of chaos. And then everything seems to reinvent itself.

John Law, John, you know all about John Law. His history reflects exactly that. So what we're trying to do here over this holiday and over two episodes is tell his story, which tells us a lot about money, right? Yeah, and we'd need to take two whole episodes to do it. This is a special series, folks. John Law's story is the story of based out of fugitive Scotsman clearly identify with that quite closely

briefly became the most powerful man in France And the richest And the richest And the richest, yeah, it was just even more important And in doing so he changed both monetary And arguably European history forever Wow, it's a big story So stay with us for it

Because his rise and his fall It's not just about history, is it? It's about the monetary system that we live in today Okay, John Law He might not be as a rest of it. expected as likes of Adam Smith, but he pretty much laid the foundation for the monetary system that we use today, right? So you could arguably say that his thinking is more important than a lot of that academic muck. Yeah, you could.

And whatever else he was, he was a gambler and a sometime murderer. He was also a practitioner. He did what he believed. And of course, as we'll find out, that didn't necessarily work to his advantage all the time. Yeah. I think, you know, you're already giving away the fact that this fact is, murderer, gambler, the beginning of the end of monetary systems and all sorts of other appalling things. John rather likes John Law.

I think I'm really quite fond of... Both for charisma every time. Well, yes, yes, perhaps. Chapter 1, the beginning. Where is this horrible person born? Well, let's wind back. All the way back to April 1671. And John Law is born in Edinburgh.

He was one of 12 children, four of whom died in childhood. His dad William Law was a goldsmith, and his mum, Jean Campbell, was William's second wife. And she had three sisters, and they'd all married well. So he's basically from a kind of upper merchant class background. So in 1883, when John Law's 12, his father, William, goes to France because he's got a kidney stone, he has to get an operation.

The chances are that he'll die under the knife, but it's his only chance. And there happens to be a company of barber surgeons of great reputation in France who do this kind of thing all the time. So before he leaves, he puts his affairs in order, says goodbye to his eight kids and his wife, and then heads off to France. And as it turns out, unfortunately, he does die on the operating table. Leaving behind eight kids. Leaving behind eight kids. And so Gene takes over the family business.

And she also avoids getting married again so as not to have to sign the business over to her husband. And at this point, goldsmiths are already in banking. So when he joins brothers takes over the kind of goldsmith side of things, actually making stuff out of gold. But Gene and John sort of jointly kind of operate the banking side of the business. So lending money, this is already something that goldsmiths are starting to do. So we're not into fractional reserve banking at this point, not quite yet. Well, not formally, but actually,

Goldsmiths really are lending out money. It's not like they have to have a one-to-one correspondence. It's not 100% reserve requirements. People know that people need credit. And there's no way you could do that and have all the gold still sitting there in the bank on demand at any time. I mean, there's actually an interesting thing called bailment.

And this is where if you want your gold to look after your gold, you put it in a bag and you give it to them. And that means that you want that gold back. But if you give them loose coins, And there's an understanding that that money can be lent out and it's not necessarily the same gold coins, et cetera, that you're going to get back. So basically, if everyone came in the goldsmiths out once

and wanted all their money back, it wouldn't be there immediately that day. I reckon I would want my own gold coins back. I mean, I think you probably would at this time because a lot of them are debased. Well, other people's maybe chipped and clipped, except. I won't mind. Yeah.

So, I mean, you kind of maybe want to use the bailment. So as a child, he's already learned about gouging interest rates, monopolies, gold. Yeah, he's kind of off before he's 15, isn't it? He's brought up in that because I suppose the other interesting one of the core things about being the goldsmith is that he's used to that world where

gold, it's an object, so it's jewelry, it's plates, it's things like that, but it's also got a separate financial function. There's this thing called moneyness somewhere that is a kind of abstract property of the gold, and he appreciates that there's a difference between

the gold object and gold has money and that's probably already kicking around in his brain away to thought. Although the things, he has a tear away. His mum actually sends him off to a boarding school in a little village called Eagle Shum, which is still about an hour and a half drive from Edinburgh.

And at least part of it, according to sources at the time, is to keep him away from the temptations at the big city. He's interested in things like gambling. And it does get to a point where he comes back, he's 16. He's meant to be... because of the VAT.

Was that? Yeah, exactly. Yes. Class war, even then. But he comes back and they have a falling out, him and his mum. They actually is a kind of court case over it.

It sounds like he's almost like trying to divorce her and get his inheritance so that he can be free. And she says in the court documents that actually the true cause of his deserting of my family was because of my motherly reprehending him for biding late out at night and going to the lottery and other games.

So basically he's just a naughty boy and she's kind of fed up with his nonsense. He's at this point he's 1617. He's about 1617. There's a lot of mothers in Edinburgh today who have similar feelings. Yes, I can imagine. Anyway, there's a lot of pushing pool

but it doesn't ever fully go to court and it does eventually get settled by the time he's 21 in 1692. The point is I think this illustrates that A, he's already someone who's very much pushing the boundaries and excited about getting out from under

and making his name in the world and also that he's someone who kind of enjoys taking risks and actually probably isn't that careful with money despite his upbringing. So it's 1692

John Laws 21 and he's finished his education he's inherited the money that he's owed from his mother and he goes down to London in the company of a chap called John Campbell who's a fellow Scot who wants to set up a goldsmiths in London now he does this

and that actually eventually becomes Coot's Bank and John Law himself ends up living in St. Martin's in the field which for anyone who's not based in London is pretty much where Charing Cross Station is today and at that point it actually was a field It's quite a brave move

even as a young man to move from Edinburgh to London quite a journey alien place to Scotland as it is today If I remember I went to London for the first time when I was 21 thinking about it. I think it's a brave move.

I think he is clearly ambitious. At this point I would say he's more reckless than anything else for reasons we'll see in a moment. I think basically he just wants to have fun because he spends a lot of his time gambling to the point where he actually has to be right back to his mum and hand over a chunk of his inheritance in exchange for more cash, basically.

God, you must have been fed up by that point. If you would think, Ben, but actually it's weird throughout their lives, they don't have a major falling out again and she doesn't disinherit him or anything like that. So Aloy's leading a somewhat possibly dissolute life and he's kind of known as a dandy

and a lady's man and he does like gambling and partying and all the rest of it. She doesn't ever actually cut him off. Maybe the other kids are worse. I mean, possibly, possibly. They'd have to try quite hard. So down in London,

he gets known as bow law. A bow is a dandy. a kind of it boy, a kind of man about town. But as in B-E-A-U, right? B-E-A-U, yes, as in, well, beautiful, I guess. And then we come to a massive turning point. It's fair to say that if this hadn't happened, John Law might just have ended up as another London society mind,

maybe dabbling in politics, maybe pushing money-making schemes around exchange alley with the other stock-jobbers. Instead, he's about to embark on a path we'll put him in a position to play financial alchemist with one of the biggest economies in Europe. Chapter 2 The Duel

In April 1694, John Law is 23 and he gets involved in a life of a fellow dandy called Edward Boe Wilson. Edward Boe Wilson is just another it boy, like John Law, another dandy.

And people are really intrigued by him because he's spending an awful lot of money down in London, even though the family that he comes from, is not well off. They're sort of, gentry but the lower end of the gentry. So for perspective, he's thought

to be spending something in the region of about £4,000 a year, which in current money is about £675,000 a year. And in terms of what people were saying about him at the time, there's the equivalent of a local gossip columnist who writes to his employers in Devon who like to be kept up to date on the news in London, and he tells them that Wilson is the subject of the general chat of the town.

He is no gamester, neither is he known to keep women company, and it cannot be yet discovered how he came to live at so prodigious and extravagancy. We never get to find out where Wilson's money comes from, because in the 9th of April 1694, he and John fight at Bloomsbury Square, and John stabs him in the stomach, with an iron and steel sword of a value of five shillings, which is about £40 to day, and to a depth of two inches, that's all according to court documents, and he dies immediately, which strikes me as a tiny bit odd, but I don't know anything about anatomy.

Okay, so this is really unlucky. It is unlucky. We don't know why they fought. A later theory claimed that Elizabeth Villiers, who was King William's mistress, was involved, but there's no evidence for that, and it likely originated a century afterwards. And there's also a scandalous pamphlet from the 1720s,

and they this suggests that Wilson was actually having an affair with a nobleman who was the person paying for his lifestyle, and that law killed Wilson to silence him, so effectively he was acting as a kind of 18th century history. But that seems to just be pure gossip meant to damage Law's reputation at the time. And the more plausible, if somewhat less dramatic account, mentions a Mrs. Lawrence. And she was a friend of Laws and she was the landlady of a house where Wilson's sister lived. Wilson then discovered that Law was keeping a mistress there and he told his sister to leave.

And Mrs. Lawrence took offence probably because like, oh what are you accusing me of running some kind of, you know, broadle or something? An argument followed and that's where the duel came from. So basically law might have been defending his friend's honour, which I think is probably quite believable, because he's clearly still quite hot-headed and reckless. But, I mean, ultimately, we don't know the real reason. After the fight, law is arrested, and the key legal question is whether it was a planned duel or a spontaneous fight. The duels were common, but illegal. And, I mean, this will seem a bit weird, actually premeditation is what made it murder and therefore punishable by hanging.

Whereas a kind of heat of the moment impulse fight meant it was mass. manslaughter, and basically in those days you got away with manslaughter. So the law claimed that Wilson attacked him suddenly in Bloomsbury Square, and that would have made it self-defense. The prosecutors argued that it was prearranged, and they showed letters and things to show that they had an ongoing feud. So it was kind of cut and dried from that point of view. So the jury agreed, they convicted them a murder, and they sentenced them to hang.

Now, the king reprieved them because although jewels were technically illegal, they were also sort of seen as a way that young men let off steam so no one was actually keen to execute people for them. But Wilson's family appealed and that left John Law, kind of rotting in prison. Now jails then were privately run so he was able to pay for better quarters. So in certain parts of the prison, poor people were kept

and they were awful, whereas the bit that he was in was probably a little bit more pleasant, maybe like a three-star B&B. So he remained there for nine months while the appeals dragged on and on. And in the background, because he was quite well-connected or from a well-connected family, Scottish politicians were lobbying the king for his release, while at the same time, Wilson's side was lobbying for him to be hung.

And the king was kind of stuck in the middle. And you get the sense that the king just wished the problem would go away. And as early as kind of May that year, you've got officials hinting in documents that law could easily escape from this prison, and it was kind of stupid of him to just be hanging around waiting to see whether they'd get a pardon or not. But I think that's a little bit unfair because obviously he's a society guy, he's a gentleman, and if he does escape from prison,

that's going to make him a fugitive. So you can see why he might have thought, well, look, I'd rather wait for this pardon, which is surely forthcoming at any minute. But in the end, the appeal doesn't go his way. He's sentenced to be hung. There's a quote in Johnson's recollections in which he recalls that one of the king's right-hand men

told him that the king wouldn't pardon law without the consent of Wilson's brother. But he also said that, I think the king is willing he should be saved provided it can be done in such a manner as that his majesty did not appear in it and then at that point reading between the lines King William tacitly gives permission

for him to go out fascinating that the king is so interested in this case right? It is interesting but I suppose we need to remember that law is basically a foreign national who's under threat of execution in a foreign country so the Scottish legal authorities were almost bound to say something even if law wasn't as well connected and he actually, you know, he is quite well connected.

So he gets out. So law makes his escape or rather by the sounds of it, he's rescued. Johnston, that's the Scottish Secretary of State we mentioned earlier, reports that the King's right-hand man came up to him and whispered to me in a crowd that my friend was at liberty but had been very slow to understand matters and prayed me to keep the secret which I did until King William's death. And from that point, we don't know exactly where law goes.

That's the point, isn't it, John, really? Well, it is, yes, yes, when you go on the run. But yes, this is a major turning point in his life, probably the major turning point, because it's his fugitive status that will eventually drive him to France, which is where he will create monetary history. You can get the news whenever you want it

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Listen to the latest from Bloomberg News Now on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen. Chapter 3, Law on the Lamb. There's a gap before he arrives in France, where he's starting his monitoring fiscal thinking. Yes, this is when he does that. Also, while he's in jail, this is probably when he meets his long-term partner, Catherine Nullis, who is oddly in a lot of, of a great-great-granddaughter of Mary Boulin,

who was Anne Bollin's big sister, the one who got away from Henry VIII. And that actually introduces the tantalising prospect that just maybe John Law's children had chewed their blood in them, depending on exactly who was the father of Mary's kids. But anyway, Catherine's brother, Charles, who's a sort of dissolute upper-class scoundrel

is in jail at the same time as law for murdering his brother-in-law. And so you have to assume that this is how they make, because she just sort of appears in his life in the historical record otherwise. And this is something I find really interesting about law in general. He never gets married. So they're happily living together

kind of like essentially out of wedlock. He's born a Protestant, but he converts to Catholicism purely for political purposes when he was to France. It's just, but he's so interesting at how, there's wars being fought over religion all over the place at this point. And I just find it fascinating what a kind of unusually

free-thinking individual he seems to be. And I don't know necessarily where that comes from. And perhaps there were a lot more people like that in Scotland and England and France of the time than we traditionally think. But to my... It's interesting, isn't you say, if he changed your religion

between Protestant and Catholic back then, it shows a kind of open-mindedness and a lack of being, but not being wedded to an ideology of any type. Although you could say that they're more or less the same but we won't go there on this podcast You're not wedded to a particular ideology You're open-minded, you're thinking freely

You've escaped from prison You've got your girl with you He's left prison Catherine's with him We don't know where he's gone But he turns up in Genoa Well he turns up in Genoa But I think the other thing

He kind of contextualised stuff a little bit At this point So 1694 while he's in jail This is also when the Bank of England gets established So England and France are based both skint because they've spent so much money on either being at war with each other or with other European powers. So England's fiscal problem dates back to Charles II. So he'd been

borrowing money from the goldsmiths and they would lend the money deposited with them to the crown and it would be secured against tax revenues coming due in the near future. So it's basically an early but very, very primitive form of government debt. But by 1672 a combination they wore in good means that Charles is out of money and so he suspends interest payments to the goldsmiths in an event which is known as the stop of the exchequer. And as it turns out, the payments are

never fully made and there are running court cases right up until the 1700s. But in the immediate term, it bankrupt several big goldsmiths and also means that many wealthy families lose their money because they had been deposing it with the goldsmiths and that had been lent to the king.

So anyway, that casts a big shadow over the crowns. creditworthiness. And so come 1693, the king's changed, it's King William now, we're in the middle of the nine years war, which is a big European war, which is basically France versus everyone else. And England's at war

again, and William needs to raise money to rebuild the Navy after a defeat. But of course, the remaining goldsmiths have no interest in financing the Crown anymore. But at the same time, the London financial sector, if you like, is buzzing. People have got lots of ideas about how to raise money. There's talk

a lot to raise. There's talks about lots of other kinds of schemes, but the scheme that does eventually get support is the idea to set up the Bank of England. So the idea is to establish a bank that will sell shares to raise £1.2 million in that money, so $1.2 million, a lot more than that in today's money, from shareholders, and in exchange they'll get an 8% annual interest rate, which is backed by tax revenues raised on excise duties from ships coming up and down to Thames, basically. And that's the start of a kind of more formal way of raising debt for the country and a way that doesn't purely rely on the whims of the crown.

Boy, has that been overused since. It has a bit. It has a bit. But as you're getting your institutionalised and your institutions are starting to get built. Whereas in France, you've still got this very kind of old system. Louis XIV has already experimented with paper money and then bind it because he doesn't trust it. the tax is raised largely from the poor. Nobles and the clergy are exempt.

The tax raising powers are sold to people who then pay for the right to raise the taxes, but then when they're collecting them, obviously there's massive scope for corruption involved in that. And so you get a much older, less efficient, more corrupt and also more vested interests kind of system of financing the country in France. So that's kind of where we are at that point.

So I think that's just, useful for thinking about what happens next. If you see an organisation set up out with the Crown, supposedly independent or a separate organisation, but also allowed to raise money with the power of the state behind it, I would definitely start thinking. Okay, so that's the state of the public finances in England and France, and that's a very rough idea of how they differ.

So now let's get back to John Law of an escape from prison. Okay, so if this was a film This is the point at which we'd break into a training montage except rather than having Rocky punching bits of meat we'd have John Law talking about Europe with his wife Catherine

or not his wife, his lady partner and so between 1695 and 1705 they spend 10 years going around Europe they spend a lot of time in France, they spend some time in Holland, there's various other places they may or may not have been and most of the time he's basically funding their lifestyle

by hosting high-end society gambling games. He's very good with statistics. He's very good with understanding probability, which, I mean, to be honest, I mean, when you read some of the things that people were getting excited about at the time, they're talking about like he's calculating the odds of rolling a seven with two dice.

And you're kind of like thinking, how did no one else know how to do that? But it's that sort of thing. And to be able to do that instinctively, it's amazing, really. Yeah, I. And also taking the interest to write down because there are a lot of people writing about probability and gaming

in particular at this point. The other thing that's interesting is that he twigs that in certain games, what you need to be is the banker. So a lot of the time he's not actually gambling so much as being the house on the behalf of a lot of rich people who probably not engaged with probability

particularly. And that's the other way he's making his money. But at the same time, he's not just doing that. He's learning about financial markets. So, you know, in Holland, he's sort of learning about shorting. And that's sort of learning about shorting. He's learning about futures options

because the financial markets in Amsterdam are extremely sophisticated by the standards of the time. He's also spent a lot of time thinking about money because obviously his goldsmithing background means that he knows a fair bit about basic banking already. I think something that's really important to point out is that none of this is coming out of the blue. The biggest driver of all this actually

and all this monetary theory stuff is the fact that England and France have been and the rest of Europe has been in war for three or four decades. So the governments are incredibly indebted and they keep looking for schemes in ways to raise more money. And so there's all kinds of schemes going around

and there's all kinds of thinking about it. So during this time, John Law actually pitches land banks to three different countries. He pitches them in England, he pitches it to France and he also pitches it to Scotland. And Scotland is the place where, in 1704, he ends up back there

and he's actually up in front of Parliament or sending his ideas to Parliament because Scotland is looking for ways to raise more money because it's gone banking up because of an ill-advised colonial scheme. Now bear in mind he can go back to Scotland because Scotland and England obviously are two separate countries so the fact he's wanted in England

doesn't mean that he's a fugitive in Scotland. But also by this point he has actually reached an agreement with Robert Wilson, Wilson's brother, that he will scrap his appeal and he's no longer going to pursue him for the death penalty. So although he hasn't got a formal pardon yet and won't receive one for quite some time, it's less of a pressing problem for him. So back in Scotland is where he publishes his monetary treaties, which is money and trade, which is basically his idea of how money works. So Felix Martin and Edward Chancellor, both of whom are respected financial historians and former guests on this podcast, made the point that law is thinking does advance the concept of money.

And there's one key quote that they pull out, which is this, money is not the value for which goods are exchanged, but the value by which they are exchanged. So in other words, law is making the point that money is not a thing in itself. It's the financial technology that makes everything else work. And overall, that's his view of the world. It's that money is the problem where there isn't enough of it. Money is the kind of oil you need to make things go round.

John, what do you think his driver was? I mean, the way you've just described him, he could have stayed in Amsterdam and made an absolutely fortune trading, right? Sounds like he would have been a phenomenal trader. He could have made a fortune doing that. What was his driver behind doing all this? Do you think he's after status, after power? After more money than you can ever make shorting stuff in Amsterdam?

I think that's a really interesting question. But I honestly think it's the ideas that drove him. I mean, there is a quote, I can't remember who it's from, but one of his contemporaries points out is not the money that he was basically interested in, it was his ideas. He's basically a world improver. One of the problems we're tying your currency to gold,

and it was a problem in it, and it would be a problem, is that sometimes you run out of gold. And I think one of the things that we forget, because we've had paper money for a while, so we recognise paper monies, foibles, relative to gold. Gold and precious metal had a lot of problems too.

They were constantly being devalued and constantly having, the relative values change. One of the things that John Law does is he goes back into the history books and looks at how much the price of silver has changed. And one of the reasons that he talks about a land bank, and this is the idea basically that you issue a paper currency that is effectively a mortgage on land.

It's not very practical, which is one reason why it doesn't take off. But the point is that the land is almost like the kind of stones of Yap. It never would actually change hands. It's just a thing that backs the IOU. And his idea is that, well, actually, we should use land. because A, that's where all of the wealth of the economy actually comes from. And B, at that time, the price of land was much less volatile than the price of silver. So he's actually talking about anchoring the paper currency to an asset,

which is a much more stable background value. So basically, I think he's very much an idealist and he's excited by economic ideas and excited by theory. At the same time, there are lots of people like him. So Daniel DeFleau is not just, you know, the writer of Robinson Crusoe. He's also a political pamphleteer and he's also a, they call them projectors.

But he's not, this guy's coming up with mad ideas for raising money or not so mad. I mean, that's where the Bank of England came from. It wasn't a default idea, but it was the idea of the guy who would actually later go on to do Scotland's ill-fated dairy in the scheme. Yeah, safer from the improvers,

eh? Well, absolutely. So, yeah, it's a time of intellectual ferment and John Law happens to be one of the flowers that grows most rapidly from that particular. What I'm talking about? Flower, weed? Weed? Weed, yes.

His proposal for this land bank, money and trade considered, is published anonymously by John's Aunt Agnes, who runs a printing business which holds the local monopoly in printing bibles as well, by the way. Everyone in politics knows who's behind it, and despite the fact that his reputation is obviously controversial, he does have some high-profile supporters,

and his scheme does get a hearing in the Scottish Parliament alongside several others. However, they cut a long and complicated story short. It's not something we need to go in any quantity for this podcast. Scotland doesn't go ahead with monetary reform. And instead, it's somewhat reluctantly agrees to unite with England in 1707. And that's partly to bail out the economy, and specifically the elites who'd lost a lot of money in the Darien scheme. Okay, so here we are. He's still in Scotland.

Is he still in Scotland for the active union? He's not, because what happens, but obviously, actor union is coming up. And he's still a fugitive. Ah, can't stay in Scotland. He can't stay in Scotland. Exactly, because it may become part of England. And so that's when he moves to, by the look at it,

that's when he moves to Genoa. Jeez. Fridgely, his descendants still calling for independence. I would explain something. So he goes to Genoa. During this time, they've had two kids. And by 1711, he's got 140,000 lira in the bank.

Now, according to James Bucking's book, a labourer earns one or two lira a day. So let's call that the minimum wage. Now, the minimum wage in the UK is about 12 quid an hour at the moment. I was not going to multiply that to a day. But even if you take 12 quid for an hour and you multiply that by 140,000, then you are looking at a sum of between 850 grand to about 1.7 million.

So he's definitely a well-off guy. He's got a lot of liquid assets. and this seems to have been built up through the same sort of things like running games also I think he's probably involved in supplying armies because again there's kind of a war going on and he's also making a lot of contacts because there's a lot of people

a lot of factions the Jacobites in Scotland are very fond of them even although he doesn't really doesn't seem to have very high convictions in terms of political stuff it's like he's kind of nice to the Jakobites because they're nice to him. He's quite a loyal person, really.

If somebody helps him out, then he tends to do likewise. But again, you don't get the sense that he's terribly ideological in terms of party politics or anything like that. He's kind of more obsessed with his ideas about monetary and economic reform. Because during this time, he is

also trying to shop his ideas around. So he's tried in Scotland and failed. He approaches the Duke of Savoy. We have a similar idea for a kind central bank type organisation. He nearly gets a scheme going and cheer in, but again, that doesn't happen. And so as far as we can see, France is currently engaged in the war of succession. That comes to an end in 1713.

And at this point, he moves back to France, presumably because you can get in now because they're not a war anymore. And it's also very clear that Louis XIV is on his last legs. It's going to be succession. France is very, very, very badly off. Debt is running at something like to 100% of GDP, which reminds me of somewhere else that we can name right now. And so basically he sees the opportunity to get his ideas maybe taken up and what is actually one of the biggest economies in Europe at this point.

So France is kind of at, again, this might sound familiar, but reform or crisis stage. Absolutely. And they decide to go for reform or as well. we will find out let's know both. A bit of both. Why not both?

Exactly. So France is desperate for fresh ideas on how to deal with its lack of money and John Law is desperate to see his ideas

put into practice. He's been knocked back by Scotland. He's been knocked back by Savoy. But maybe he can find a home for his thoughts

in France and we'll find out how that went in the next episode. I'm Francie Laquan. an award-winning journalist, and I've got a new podcast, Leaders with Francine Lacqua from Bloomberg podcasts. I've interviewed everyone from Heads of State to fashion icons about the news of the moment, but I've always been curious who are these people as leaders. I don't think there's one right way

to be a leader. Make decisions. A poor decision is always better than no decision. Listen to new episodes every other Monday. Follow leaders with Francine Lacois wherever you get your podcasts.