The Mississippi Bubble was an economic bubble in France in the early 1700s that developed in parallel with Britain’s disastrous South Sea Bubble. The mastermind behind the Mississippi Bubble was John Law, a Scottish financier, gambler and playboy who ascended into the upper echelons of French public finance through his friendship with the Duke of Orléans. Law became the French government’s primary financial advisor and used this power to establish the Banque Générale, a bank with the authority to issue “paper” money, as well as the Mississippi Company (later called "the Compagnie des Indes"), which was granted a monopoly on the development of France’s vast Mississippi Territory in North America. When investors started salivating over the supposedly immense bounty of resources in the Mississippi Territory, including gold and silver, they bid Compagnie des Indes shares up to astronomical heights. Unfortunately, the company’s prospects turned out to be little more than empty promises and the shares crashed back down to earth, taking down France’s stock market and public finances with it.