bankster
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]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.
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]bankster (plural banksters)
- (informal, derogatory) A banker who is seen as criminally irresponsible, or as extorting bailout money from the taxpayers.
- 2009 February 15, Andrew Rawnsley, “The cabinet's quarrels are a warning of the storms ahead”, in The Observer[1]:
- Hearing Sir Fred the Shred and the rest of them utter some hedged half-apologies has not made the public feel any warmer to the banksters.
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]References
[edit]- The man who busted the banksters, Smithsonian Magazine