The South Sea Company- a scam that makes Worldcom, Enron, and Madoff combined look like child’s play

The South Sea Company was established in 1711 to have a monopoly on the slave trade in the "South Sea" region of the Caribbean and South America.

A region that was controlled entirely by Spain, a country that the UK was at war with and that did not trade with even in peace time. There was almost no possibility for the South Sea Company to actually engage in any form of trade.

In reality the company was a scheme to consolidate and reduce the national debt, which got out of hand. The "South Sea Bubble" was the first such bubble in modern economic history. At its peak in 1720 the company was worth 10x as much as the East India Company, a company that ACTUALLY engaged in trade around the world. The South Sea Company was also worth about 3 times as much as the entire GDP of the UK.

This would be like if a modern silicon valley tech company reached a valuation of $60 trillion without producing a single product of any kind.