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What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

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Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#91

Post by hecanjog »

Loughla wrote: post #87
hecanjog wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, but I disagree that it's a good question. "Explain it to me like I'm 5" (not even written out in words, just the abbreviation we all know) is not a curious place to come from, it is a desire for the quickest path to the end/payoff.

Eli5 is a common way of asking for clarification. That's all.

It's common, I know what it means. It communicated its intent properly, I think. It's surprising to me that a venture capital finance site would need to clarify the difference between value and wealth, and I would be interested in hearing questions about this, but "ELI5" doesn't even meet the basic criteria for being a question. It asks no questions.

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#92

Post by pfdietz »

As I understand it, some of the silver was siphoned off in trade with China (via the trans-Pacific route to Manila). China needed continuing silver imports because silver was not used there in the form of standardized coinage, but rather in ingots that were weighed and subdivided, with inevitable continuing loss.

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#93

Post by hecanjog »

busyant wrote: post #90
hecanjog wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, but I disagree that it's a good question. "Explain it to me like I'm 5" (not even written out in words, just the abbreviation we all know) is not a curious place to come from, it is a desire for the quickest path to the end/payoff.

I think you're taking the comment too literally. I took it to mean something like, "I won't understand an abstruse Ph.D.-level explanation of what happened. I need an explanation geared toward the layperson." In fact, I think that's closer to the essence of ELI5--as opposed to literally explaining something at the 5 year old level. I suppose you can quibble about using the initialism, ELI, but only if you're advocati…

I don't think that I am. I don't think that they want to be treated like they're 5, but I do think they don't want to put thought into it. We're training ourselves to offload critical thinking and I was surprised to see it driving the conversation here.

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#94

Post by pfdietz »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #72
trgn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

spain was no longer a major player in world politics by 1800s, but they had a good 2-3 century run. not sure if the monetary crisis was really did them in, or more just it being the ebb and flow of history. britain's world dominance is long over too. if they did "fuck up", it was because charles v was the first global hegemon, nobody know how to do that, he was in uncharted territory. and obviously no, the merino she…

> then of course, industrialize early. It's extremely convenient to have coal, iron, and waterways in the region where you wish to achieve that early industrialization. There's a map somewhere showing where those happened - England, France/Germany, eastern/great lakes US.

Also limestone, needed as flux for iron and steel making.

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#95

Post by caminante »

caminante wrote: post #67
gtech1 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea what you are talking about. 1. They never returned 92tons of gold. The vast majority of the national treasure is still in Moscow. I hope the EU ties this to the current Russian assets frozen in the EU. 2. Bolsheviks ? Russia collapsed in 1917 and Bassarabia voted to join Romania. There was no Russian control in Bassarabia, no war, no fight. Nobody forced them, true, they were in dire circumstances, b…

Please read again and calm down. I expressly said "ex gold." >Bolsheviks ? Lmao. Where are you getting these falses premises? 1. Who rose to power after Russia collapsed in 2017? 2. There was no Bolshevik fighting or presence in Bessarabia? 3. Romania didn't intervene to fight Bolsheviks in Bessarabia? You must be hallucinating to think otherwise.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_military_intervention...

1917*

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#96

Post by paganel »

greenie_beans wrote: post #78
paganel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Mississippi River Valley had more millionaires per capita TIL. Does anyone have any good recommendations for a (relatively) good social/economic history of the Southern US states? (because I guess that that type of history book would cover this type of information).

from the antebellum era? try anything by eric foner, but a good place to start is forever free: the story of emancipation and reconstruction. it's accessible history that includes a bit of background about the political economy leading up to the civil war. any of his books about reconstruction might be interesting but not exactly what you're looking for. "black reconstruction in america" by dubois is a keystone text…

Thanks a lot!

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#97

Post by exidy »

pfdietz wrote: post #92

As I understand it, some of the silver was siphoned off in trade with China (via the trans-Pacific route to Manila). China needed continuing silver imports because silver was not used there in the form of standardized coinage, but rather in ingots that were weighed and subdivided, with inevitable continuing loss.

It was very surprising to see zero mention of the Manila galleon[0] trade route in the linked article, even if technically the question was about gold rather than silver. The simple answer to the question of what happened to the money was that Spain spent it! The impacts on SE Asia were profound and are still being felt today.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_galleon

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#98

Post by otherme123 »

aurizon wrote: post #41

With all this gold, Spain went on a buying spree, weapons, art, churches etc - and the sellers(rest of Europe) industrialized as the gold trickled down into THEIR economies. When the gold no longer arrived, Spain went into a steady decline as their rich upper crust of RC Churche, Kings, Queens, Lords, Ladies etc. and eventually became democratic after Franco.

Primarily spent in wars (mercenaries, weapons, warships...) and keeping the colonies under control.

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#100

Post by colechristensen »

financetechbro wrote: post #88
ares623 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hold up a minute

We’re sadly living through the same thing right now

And people won't point to the actual causes:

- The COVID free-money needed to be less and to end sooner

- The COVID restrictions needed to be less and end sooner

The disease didn't go away, we just at one point decided we were done with restrictions even though conditions didn't change.

We needed restrictions ONLY during spikes and more consideration needed to be given to the long term economic effects of COVID policies.

An example graph, when restrictions should have been on or off left as an exercise to the reader

https://wgntv.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2022/01/tuedeat...

The problem is it became a non-expert political issue where people who knew meme-facts based on their social bubble only really argued absolutist policies against stone wall opposition.

We needed people in a minmax mode arguing about specific levels of risk vs reward to set optimums, instead you had 0 risk folks screaming at 0 restriction folks screaming back with the middle entirely excluded. (We'll STILL get people on both sides responding here)

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