You might be surprised to hear that while Spain losing access to its silver and gold had immediate negative effects, it benefited the economy over time!

It is important to remember that like all resources, gold has no inherent value. The discovery of new world precious metals was a classic example of the need to maintain supply to keep demand steady. In the 15th century, Spanish explorers encountered literal mountains filled with silver and gold to a lesser extent. Normally, one would expect this to be a great boon, but in fact the massive surge in silver and gold production lessened their values immensely, causing huge inflation.

Imagine you're a peasant family with a box full of silver coins in life savings. How would a massive minting and release of silver into the economy effect you? The discovery of silver and gold and their subsequent release into the Spanish economy is the equivalent of "We have debt, let's just print more money!"

Spain losing access to its treasure fleets was beneficial to the majority of the Spanish people in the long run as it evened out the ever-lowering prices of precious metals. The only people who benefited from Spain's mining was the highest tier of society who actually controlled the new silver and gold, everyone else's savings diminished in value.

An interesting modern tie into this is the diamond business. Only a certain amount of diamonds are released every year, the rest are stored in vaults. If every diamond ever mined was put on sale tomorrow, your wife would throw out her useless carbon ring.

Citation (Wikipedia provides a nice overview, but take it with a grain of salt as always.): http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-price-revolution.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Spain#Gold_and_silver_from_the_New_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Price_Revolution