ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that John Law was the great macroeconomic choreographer of the eighteenth century, one of whose legacies to modern generations is that he may be regarded as the spiritual father of “quantitative easing”. Initially, Law produced some remarkable economic theorising on money and its role in influencing economic activity. He was then given the opportunity to implement his theory as a policy in France. This produced the Mississippi System wherein Law substituted paper money for specie and equities in the Mississippi Company for government securities. For a short period, his system worked but eventually imploded forcing France to return to its antiquated monetary system.
