Spain didn't hoard the gold and silver it looted from the New World, it spent it is as fast as it could, and as fast as it could borrow against future shipments of gold and silver. The flood of precious metal allowed the government to crush native industry under heavy taxes and moronic regulation, but still keep spending. It brought abroad the things its crushed domestic industries could no longer produce.
When the flood of precious metals from the New World, basically free money that the government and those close to it got to squander, slowed, and then dried up, Spain was screwed. Its whole system of government and economy was based not on production, but on grabbing a share of the government's money. When the government went broke the private economy, moribund from taxes and regulations, could not pick the slack, and the country spent the next several centuries in poverty.
Any resemblance the between the policies of the Spanish Hapsburgs and Bourbons, and the way the Democrat Party combines taxes, regulations, and borrowing/printing greenbacks, is chillingly apt.
Thanks for the history lesson! Spain and Portugal’s plunder of the New World for precious metals is very interesting. They came here to plunder and convert the natives. The English and Dutch and other North Europeans came here to exploit our vast land and untapped natural resources to further industry and agriculture. One example being forests to cut down to make iron and steel.
But the huge cojones on all these guys to come exploring to the New World and make the first European settlements!!