by Brian Parsons, American Thinker:

In the 1870s, the term “robber baron” was first used to describe an exploitative class of industrialists who utilized their wealth to create monopolies of resources and amass control in the fledgling United States.  The name describes an illegitimate aristocracy of unelected plutocrats.  John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie; all American industrial royalty whose names line the streets of America and the pages of our history books.  One hundred fifty years later, we face a new global class of robber barons.