The history of the Spanish Conquistadors successful search for physical gold in the new world has been written and it is a period of inflation in Spain. Instead

The history of the Spanish Conquistadors successful search for physical gold in the new world has been written and it is a period of inflation in Spain. Instead of focusing on bringing back real wealth from the new world (coffee, chocolate, tomatoes, potatoes), they brought back useless yellow metal that just caused inflation. The idea is to match the money supply to the real wealth in the economy. I don't disagree with your assertion that we are seeing a decoupling of money from real wealth, but the gold standard is no guarantee against inflation - or worse, deflation.