bankster

Blend of banker +‎ gangster

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.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈbæŋkstə/

bankster (plural banksters)

1. (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:

     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.

• The man who busted the banksters, Smithsonian Magazine

• Bankerts