With the creation of central banks in the 18th century, a significant monetary innovation emerged: the use of paper currency. The most striking example in France is that of John Law. This Scotsman, exiled in Paris, proposed to the regent, the Duc d'Orléans, a solution to the bankruptcy of the royal finances by creating a state bank and a colonial trading company: the famous Banque Royale and the Compagnie du Mississippi.

With this system, Law linked paper money to his company's shares. The more banknotes circulated, the higher the value of the shares, and the more solid the bank seemed to be, until speculation outstripped reality. The bubble burst suddenly in 1720, ruining the nobility, the bourgeoisie, and much of Europe, which had come to speculate on rue Quincampoix. The result was a lasting distrust of paper money in France and Europe's first major lesson in speculative bubbles.

A century later, the French Revolution broke new ground with assignats, a currency backed by seized Church property. While an attractive concept in theory—transforming land into monetary collateral—it proved ineffective in practice, as land is neither liquid nor divisible. The result was hyperinflation, multiple prohibitions on land use, uncontrolled inflation, and severe shortages.

In response to this chaos, Napoleon re-established gold and silver as the monetary basis in 1800 with the creation of the Banque de France, thereby guaranteeing the regular pay of his armies. This was a pragmatic measure to restore confidence: payment in hard currency.

Moving forward two centuries, after the First World War, governments financed the effort through inflation and the suspension of gold convertibility. Let's look at the Roaring Twenties. The American Fed pursued an overly accommodating monetary policy—why? To support the British pound. The result was a classic recipe for disaster: easy credit, unbridled speculation on Wall Street, widespread share purchases on credit, and the emergence of a real estate and banking bubble.

When this system became unsustainable, the crash of 1929 was inevitable, leading to massive bank failures, record unemployment, and queues at soup kitchens. This period gave rise to the persistent misconception that all deflation is bad, whereas it is necessary to distinguish between deflation through growth (healthy) and deflation resulting from debt (devastating).

In the 1990s, the "Asian miracle" had the world dreaming. Exchange rates were pegged to the dollar, growth was at 8-10%, and Western capital was pouring in. This period of prosperity ended abruptly when the tide receded. Bankruptcies cascaded, currencies devalued up to 80%, and investors were ruined. The IMF had to intervene, imposing painful reforms. The same scenario as always recurred: abundant capital, credit-fed bubbles, and eventual collapse.

The Internet bubble (2000) was followed by the subprime real estate bubble. Securitization transformed bank loans into "triple-A" financial products that were spread globally. The promise was to eliminate risk by diluting it; the reality was that all risks were, in fact, correlated. When the real estate market collapsed, so did the entire global banking system.

The result was massive public bailouts, quantitative easing and zero interest rates. Consequently, a new paradigm emerged: crisis were no longer allowed to purge excesses, but were instead met with ever increasing debt and money printing. And where has all this led us? To the current situation, which I call the "everything bubble". This is where a wide range of assets—and I'm not just talking about stocks and real estate, but art, crypto, and even things like Pokémon cards—inflates artificially, all at once.

From one century to the next, one constant emerges: when a society believes it can create wealth with money instead of producing real goods, speculative bubbles appear. From John Law to 2008, from the rue Quincampoix to Wall Street, the process repeats itself: euphoria, credit, boom, and bust.

In the end, when trust in paper currency erodes, people seek alternatives—gold, land, safe havens, or new currencies. Yesterday Napoleon imposed a metallic standard, today some see Bitcoin as a successor.

The history of finance is a recurring cycle: print, speculate, collapse. Until the next bubble.