There is no hoarier chestnut of financial history than the Tulip Mania, and hard on its heels are the stories of the infamous South Sea Bubble and the contemporaneous financial scheme of John Law. The first of these is part of the historical lexicon even of captains of industry and journalists, and has endured endless repetition, the tale usually based on Charles Mackay's highly embellished 1841 retelling (Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. London: R. Bentley). The speculative bubbles of 1720 are more complex and better researched phenomena, which accounts, perhaps, for their less frequent invocations by laymen. Scholars, on the other hand, do not hesitate to misinterpret these events.