| The insights into the current Dollar hegemony from this article are excellent, but I fail to see the striking similarities. If one studies the price revolution [0] in Europe mainly taking place during the Spanish Golden century ("Siglo Oro") the statement: [...]access to unlimited quantities of a universal medium of exchange, craved and accepted everywhere at best just forces an analogy but in reality the "Spanish elite" weren't even near it. America's silver (and to some extend gold) pouring into Western Europe was just one aspect of financial power but without adequate instruments like (1) safe enough infrastructure to protect against piracy, (2) appropriate financial instruments and (3) a solid framework of economics (academic institutions like the "School of Salamanca"[1] could just barely keep up, offered some new insights but ultimately those were tragically forgotten after the fast decline) the "new wealth" couldn't be properly utilized and leveraged. In the end both France and Spain had to declare state bankruptcy over their costly wars to their respective wealthy merchants sitting in cities like Antwerpen. France then emerged as the new center of power in Europe. The "financial innovations" were mostly driven by the merchant class in the Low Countries who had freedom to establish their own judicial system regarding trade and loans, those were slowly adapted by the Netherlands and later by England. Jakob Fugger is prime example [2] of that class at that time in Europe having built a monopoly on copper mining, he went on to establish new silver mining techniques in the wake of the Great Bullion Famine.
In 1527 - at his peak - Jakob Fugger resided over 2,800,000 Florins about 2% Europe's GDP at that time or in today's standard an estimated $400 billon fortunate. He was also instrumental into securing a gigantic loan of of about 100,000 ounces of gold for Charles I later becoming the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. [0]https://eh.net/book_reviews/american-treasure-and-the-price-... [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Salamanca#Economic... [2]https://fuggerstrasse.eu/en/history.html |