Other editions of book The Mississippi Bubble

In 1716 France was broke. A series of wars waged by Louis XIV had left the economy in ruins, the king in debt, and the government coffers empty. France did not even have enough gold to produce new coins. Into this breech stepped John Law, a brilliant Scottish economist, and a man on the run from British justice. He knew that France could never recover if it continued to base it's money on precious metals that the government actually owned. So, he set up a bank and obtained the right to issue "paper money"-pieces of paper that stood for value, but had no intrinsic worth of its own. Next, he bought a nearly defunct entity called the Mississippi Company, spun stories of gold and gems for the taking in France's Louisiana territories, and issued shares of stock. To sweeten the deal, he offered nearly unlimited credit and would guarantee the share's value. People flocked from all over France to buy Mississippi Company stock. By 1719, 500 livre shares were selling for 5000 livres. Overnight, poor people were becoming rich, and the rich were becoming even wealthier. At some point the bubble had to burst; and, in 1720, it did. The value of Mississippi Company shares began decreasing; and people started asking, if my paper stock shares were losing value, what was happening to my paper money? This began a run of people demanding gold for paper, which the banks could not provide. When the Mississippi bubble burst, tens of thousands were left impoverished. John Law was forced to flee the country, to die three years later-penniless. Emerson Hough has beautifully captured the triumph and tragedy of that era in his best selling novel: The Mississippi Bubble. It's a must read for anyone interested in how greed can overcome common sense in even the most rational of people.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.

Gentlemen, this is America! The speaker cast upon the cloth-covered table a singular object, whose like none of those present had ever seen. They gathered about and bent over it curiously. "This is that America," the speaker repeated. "Here you have it, barbaric, wonderful, abounding!" With sudden gesture he swept his hand among the gold coin that lay on the gaming table. He thrust into the mouth of the object before him a handful of louis d'or and English sovereigns. "There is your America," said he. "It runs over with gold. No man may tell its richness. Its beauty you can not imagine."

This book, "The Mississippi bubble; how the star of good fortune rose and set and rose again", by Emerson Hough, is a replication. It has been restored by human beings, page by page, so that you may enjoy it in a form as close to the original as possible. This book was created using print-on-demand technology. Thank you for supporting classic literature.

This is a reproduction of the original artefact. Generally these books are created from careful scans of the original. This allows us to preserve the book accurately and present it in the way the author intended. Since the original versions are generally quite old, there may occasionally be certain imperfections within these reproductions. We're happy to make these classics available again for future generations to enjoy!

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.