Well, Ben Bernanke cant say he wasnt warned. You may recall, the hacker group known as Anonymous issued a demand on March 11 that Bernanke step down as Fed chairman.

We aim to break up the global banking cartel centered at the Federal Reserve, International Monetary Fund, Bank of International Settlements [sic] and World Bank, their video manifesto declares.

The outfit managed to briefly shut down the websites of Amazon, PayPal, Visa and MasterCard in retaliation for those firms cutting business ties to WikiLeaks, so we assume the original threat was more than just an idle one.

Fast-forward 90 days. Big surprise, Bernanke has not resigned. But on Saturday, hackers broke into the computer system of the International Monetary Fund. They got away with a large quantity of data, including documents and e-mails.

At least, thats what a security expert familiar with the incident who wasnt authorized to speak on the subject told Bloomberg. As of this morning, no one knows who did the job.

Only hours later, however, Anonymous issued a new statement, with the ingenious title Ctrl+Alt+Bernanke.

The Best of Addison Wiggin