Some of them made a deep impression on me. There were a couple of them which warned against greed, like the Fisherman and His Wife, and the Midas story. I took them to heart.
Greed is Bad, not good, the way they tell us now.
Killing the golden goose was a fable about a greedy couple who had a goose that laid a golden egg daily.
This made them very comfortable in their lives. But they got greedy and wanted more, so they killed the goose to get inside and get more.
But there were no more. And then they had no goose.
The US has had a golden goose since WW2. The dollar has been the world's reserve currency, and since 1972, the petrodollar has been needed by every country in the world, which gives the US the advantage of the resources of said countries.
The US controlled the international trade of countries through the SWIFT system.
The movies it put out, and the media they control, convinced many people in the world that we were the good guys. The millions of people killed by the US might have made a brief impression, but then they got dropped right down the Memory Hole, and the illusion resumed.
The US was able to put crippling sanctions on countries like DPRK and Cuba, making sure that their development was difficult.
But since this century began, the US went wild with sanctions, slapping them on every country that refused to completely submit.
When they started in on Russia after 2014, (when the US overthrew the government of Ukraine, but didn't get Crimea the way they had planned), Russia and China got together to form a new trade bloc that didn't involve US control. It has been difficult for them, since the infrastructure of world trade is already set up to favor the US.
But now comes Trump, who has decided to use tariffs as a form of sanctions, but on allies instead of perceived adversaries.
Great plan. Complain on Truth Social that the dollar is losing power, and then announce that anyone who doesn't use the dollar exclusively will be banned from using the dollar.
Anyone who joins BRICS will be banned from SWIFT and the dollar.
Putative allies are told not to trade with Russia, or face punitive fines.
Anyone who remains subservient to the US will be charged tariffs AND will be forced to invest in the US.
Here we have an illustration of killing the golden goose, happening now, in real life.
That's what greed does.
