Quote from: bobdutica on May 02, 2014, 11:18:58 PM

When the Spanish conquistadors invaded Mexico and Central and South America, they brought home a great quantity of gold. The amount of gold they brought back home was enough to cause inflation back home.

That's an excellent point, and one few people know.

All that gold mining caused inflation. But inflation wasn't understood back then. They thought gold was wealth. So huge efforts were put into gold-mining projects. Remember, this was in an era before cheap transport. Most transactions were local. Most long-distance shipping was for luxuries - silks, spices, gold, jewels, and such. So the country was expending resources developing colonies and gold mining, and becoming poorer by doing so.

Today, despite much noise from the "gold bugs", gold is just a commodity. Its price in dollars has varied over a factor of 6 in the last 20 years without affecting much.