So I refer to the Cerro Rico, or 'rich mountain', a humongous deposit of silver that the Spanish Empire stumbled across in modern Bolivia in around the year 1545. Needless to say, the conquistadors salivated over this entire mountain and organised mining operations to extract as much silver as they could and ship it over the Atlantic. In general terms, this dumping of silver onto the European market lead to heavy inflation on the silver-backed Peso, and it seems like the Spanish didn't think to peg taxes to inflation, meaning they were effectively taxing less and less wealth. The Spanish also spent a big chunk of this silver on what we might today call 'Defense', i.e. a giant navy that the English, French and Dutch would make a habit of sinking.
My question is, assuming that the Spanish recognized silver as the white, pretty metal useful as a unit of exchange that it was and not as an actual commodity in its own right, what should their economic policy have been in order to best advance their imperial ambitions? In short, how do they best play the cards that were dealt to them in finding this source of silver?