steal all the gold from the aztec

they were indebted to "german" bankers

Nah, 1500s economy is super rational given the circumstances.

That is an assumption based on the implication that markets have low information cost andhigh monetization, which would allow a flexibility in contracts to accomodate for inflation.

Basically, the economic structure encouraged people to exploit knowledge of inflation rather to spread it, allowing an arbitrage for high ups in the gold chain.

Spain controls a larger market share. They can buy proportionally more labor then they could have without the gold. The idea that any amount of mining produces zero wealth is absolutely retarded. Inflation diminishes returns, it doesn't fucking negate them.

The gold was a very small % of the income of Spain. Most of the income came from Castile. And Spain went bankrupt,because Charles the fith took loans for his wars from Spain,so he left his son endebted,while his brother,that recieved the hre,which expended all the money was debt free.

and ""dutch"" lenders

>Produce something in France: it costed you two units of gold.
>Produce something in Spain: it costed you nine units of gold.

No go and sell the one produced in Spain anywhere you can.

Well,Switzerland does it.

Well say Spain imports a lot of gold for a few years. Wages in gold Spain rise to say double that of an English or Dutch laborer.

Now who in their right mind would want to do business with Spain? Their grain is more expensive in gold than grain from the Amsterdam grain market, their wool costs more than English wool. High gold labor prices in Spain will drive up exporting cost killing local industry in Spain.

On the flip side of the coin English and Dutch produce becomes more economical because it can be produced cheaper (in gold wages). This in turn also kills national industry. It's basically a one-two punch against your local economy to hoard a resource like that without some sort of industrial underpinning.

Adam Smith also figured this out.

It was all our privateers stealing the gold that did it

Aztecs didn't have much gold actually. The big silver and gold mines were actually in South America.

more gold = existing gold is worth less than before
tax levels stayed at the same level
taxed revenue was proportionally less so they couldn't cover their expenditures

It's because those damned thieves Tulio and Miguel blocked off their path to El Dorado

> 1500
> Labour markets

Everything everyone else said, along with the fact that the slight boost the Spanish had at the beginning of all this caused them to stagnate, which left them in the dust when everyone else started making dosh off of colonialism as well.

Silver was money because it was the currency demanded by the producer of last resort. China demanded Silver in exchange for manufacture goods like silk and rarities like tea.
Today The Dollar is money. Saudi Arabia demands it in exchange for Oil which runs our mechanized economy. Oil is demanded by every single country, therefore all those countries must hold money in dollar bills.

They kicked out their lenders and didn't bother to control the money supply

they could have benefited greatly from some better central banking

Jakob Fugger was not a Jew.