I think you'd like this overview of England's South Sea Company and how John Blunt used all kinds of now illegal monetary fraud to become England's largest company, worth more than their GDP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1kndKWJKB8
> become England's largest company, worth more than their GDP:
In case people don't realize, GDP is the total amount a country produces per year, not the total value of the country. There's nothing impossible about a country's largest company being worth more than it's GDP.
There's still a long way to go to do that: With that market cap, Apple is worth nearly 1% of the world’s GDP according to the latest estimates from the World Bank that peg the world’s output at $74.2 trillion. That also means the company is valued at close to 4.4% of America’s $18 trillion GDP.
https://www.investopedia.com/news/apple-now-bigger-these-5-t...
What is most interesting about the South Sea Company, is that they didn't actually produce anything. They had rights to send one ship to Spanish ports for trade in the new world, but the ports would turn them away because the port authorities didn't want them/didn't believe them. Vs exporting oil which now heavily used.
In case people don't realize, GDP is the total amount a country produces per year, not the total value of the country. There's nothing impossible about a country's largest company being worth more than it's GDP.