bankster

Meaning

Noun

• A banker who is seen as criminally irresponsible, or as extorting bailout money from the taxpayers.

Origin

• Judge Ferdinand Pecora has been credited with coining the term "bankster." In June 1933, his image appeared on the cover of Time magazine, seated at a US Senate table, a cigar in his mouth. Pecora’s hearings were said to have coined a new phrase, "banksters" for the finance "gangsters." However, the word, with the same meaning, had appeared in the U.S. press at least a year and a half previous to that.
• The term was later used by Léon Degrelle, Belgian fascist politician and journalist, in 1937 as a pejorative term for high financiers.