There's a new series on our public broadcasting system called "The Ascent Of Money" by Niall Ferguson. In it he credits a Scotsman, John Law, for first centralizing the French economic system, then a monstrous 'bubble' caused by phantom investment in Mississippi corporation, leading to a destroyed French economy and contributing to the French revolution.

It is fantastically interesting, I'm not sure I believe the whole story, but it reads like an early version of what just happend in the US and Iceland.