Is There a Cure for Greed?

From the Ship of Fools Tarot, the Four of Coins; from the Wisdom of the Four Winds, Kauri:

The usurers perpetrate a vile trade

And prey upon the poor

Without heed, that in so doing

They starve the world.

~Das Narrenschiff

The only thing worse than a miserly person is one who is stingy and greedy. Usuers (a person who lends money at unreasonably high rates of interest) are getting rich while the poor get poorer. As a former bookkeeper for a business, I often had to deal with garnishing employee wages when someone couldn't pay back their loans. I remember telling one lender, who called to verify employment, not to give a person a loan because he would not be able to pay it back at such a high rate of interest. They gave it to him anyway. These companies create a debt treadmill that makes struggling families worse off than they were before - but they don't care because they are raking in money. Kauri is a huge tree with a trunk diameter big enough to rival Californian sequoias. The size and strength of kauri timber made it a popular wood for construction and ship building, but by 1900 less than 10 per cent of the original kauri survived. Balance is its message, and makes me wish for a cure for greed.

Avarice hoards itself poor; charity gives itself rich.

~German proverb