Anonymous Demands on the Federal Reserveby
Addison Wiggin
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 new video lists a litany of crimes by the Fed and blames Democrats and Republicans for failing to stop them. It concludes with the ultimatum: “We must now launch Operation Empire State Rebellion. The operation will commence on June 14th.” That’s tomorrow. “As a first step,” the message concludes, “we are calling upon you to occupy a public space until Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke steps down.” Hmmn… “A public space” is pretty vague. Maybe Anonymous has something bigger planned. Maybe they were behind the IMF hack. But right now it sounds as if your editor is supposed to wander over to Mount Vernon Place, two blocks from our office, and start shouting… at passersby? We do that every day already. Nobody listens. Reprinted with permission from The Daily Reckoning. June 15, 2011 Addison Wiggin [send him mail] is the editorial director and publisher of The Daily Reckoning. He is the author, with Bill Bonner, of Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving The Soft Depression of The 21st Century and the upcoming Empire of Debt. His latest book is The Demise of the Dollar...and Why It's Great for Your Investments. Copyright © 2011 Daily Reckoning
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