_{Except we are the ones on the ledge}

A pre-owned prophylactic was proffered by the Grey Lady a few years back. The "S" word, Scumbag, appeared in the NYTimes crossword for the first time, raising questions of taste and propriety, and ramifications, too. Besides the usual ones, whenever a small puddle of rubber rears its spent little head.

On taste there is no quibble. Most of us don't really want the word to burst from its package of guilt and shame and juvenile furtivity. Nay, stay firm, we say, and resist a new low standard for proper social intercourse.

I am not anti-condom. This is no Trojan hors de combat.

And I am no prude. (Though I wonder: will there be nothing left, at the juncture of titillation and contempt?)

No. Rather, I ask:  Whatever will we call Them, if this one -- Scumbag --becomes limp from over-use?

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Props to propriety. But this is about what's a proper insult for a self-privileged and special class. The Times deems it ordinary. Eh? Thanks, but no thanks. We need this word, potent and transgressive. La dolce morte to good name and fair reputation, unfairly won. A pitch-perfect personification-in-a-thimble of mis-spent, unproductive slime, pretending to humanity. It has no equivalent.

I don't want Scumbag to pop up willy-nilly, in social intercourse, nor doomed to the outer-most coarse. Just the right stew of adult, measured, noxious and disgusting. Not too dilute. The debate has never been more pertinent, this question of just what-who-when constitutes a Scumbag. It will preoccupy us more and more, coming up again and again, leaving its mess everywhere.

We confront Fiscal Criminality on a unique historical scale. We need Scumbag, now more than ever.

We share the dawning awareness of just how many there are. More than we ever realized. People who played close to where the cash was, and inflated their own worth. Who made damn sure they were the first receptacle of their own financial self-gratification.

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Madoff was endlessly self-stroking, in ways that defy common understanding, knowing as he did the pent-up furies of no-real-investment-activity would explode in his face. Why did we allow our system to get so jammed up he could do this for 1 year, much less 10?

Too many slapped wrists for naughty Scumbag hands. We just didn't stop, because we wondered aloud, our groupthink did, if perhaps Greed really was Good? And when we realized, when we at last knew it wasn't, we still  embraced dividends over living within means, get mine over get together. We still  wanted to keep it up a little longer, just a bit more. For sloppy seconds from our betters, at least.

Better my ass.

Truth told? All of us, the over-pampered, TV-idling majority of us, if only WE worked where we could bribe each other with round after round of high/higher/obscene salaries, we would have, too. Practically every one of use.  Uh-uh. Don't even.

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But we don't, and we didn't, because we are just regular people, and we just rent our money. But they did, the Pros. So reckoning is due, gimlet-eyed; accounting is called for, right here, right now. No excuses.

For the oceans of loss, all of it visible now.

• Sending jobs overseas? results in the desertification of whole industries. NG. No amount of dry well humping will revive whole sectors of what used to be "our birthright". Uh-huh.
• De-regulation? makes criminals of everyone who is de-regulated. The more radical the de-reg, the more rapacious the criminal.
• Off-shore banking? provides criminal havens for cartels, slavers, dictators and...American Banking. What's wrong with this picture?
• Repeal of Glass-Steagall? financial armageddon. Our banks should be credit unions. Investment banking should re-invent itself. Never the twain should meet, ever.

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We need this word, Scumbag. Thief, inside trader, embezzler, deregulator, credit default swapper, futures speculator: nothing defines these ponzi-ists to a fare-thee-well like S does. We need one juicy, sticky term, one that won't come unstuck, that leaves a stain. That captures the furtive, oh-my-god-what-if-I-get-caught, fist-pumping, me-firsting, me-bursting, make-a-big-gooey-pile and fuck-you-losers selfishness of it all.

No more "on the other hand". "Scumbag" please, once and for all, for everyone making more than 10 times, per hour, as their lowest paid employees. Greed is BAD.  Let's have honest names for the pricks who still think otherwise. And we need more than that.

When the experts screw us, when the guardians build palaces, when the shepherds shear their sheep then devour them whole, we need the other "S" words. We need Senate hearings. Statements, under oath. Subpoenas. And Sentences.

Stiff ones.