If the unofficial end of the European summer season comes with the return of those 9-saying Germans who dash every carefully laid plan to stuff German taxpayers with the European bailout bill for the second year running, the official end is when the Greeks come back from their German-sponsored two week vacation in the Cyclades (soon to be known as Nieder-Niedersachsen) and start bombing things. Which is precisely what happened two hours ago. From Reuters [6]: "A makeshift bomb exploded outside a National Bank of Greece branch in Athens early on Tuesday, causing minor damage but no injuries, police said. Windows were smashed and four parked cars suffered minor damage in the blast, which took place about 4 a.m (0100 GMT) in the western suburb of Ilion." Luckily nobody was hurt. However, it would not look good on the front page of German papers that the general Greek population is not ungrateful for the continued ECB recycling of ponzi cash, but has decided to take out an ATM machine or two, which is why... "We suspect it is linked to terrorism," said a police official who declined to be named. Sure enough, when all else fails, blame something: Bush, a glitch, or terrorism.
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The medium-sized device was planted underneath the bank's ATM machine, police said, adding that there had been no warning call and no one claimed responsibility for the blast.
Arson attacks against banks, foreign firms and local politicians have become more frequent in Greece in recent years as the country battles soaring unemployment and struggles through a recession deepened by austerity policies imposed by foreign lenders. They are usually blamed on far-left groups.
In June, gunmen rammed a van packed with gas canisters into Microsoft's Greek headquarters in Athens and then set the vehicle on fire. A fringe leftist militant group claimed responsibility for that attack.
We wonder if it was the "Marxists who hate MS Office" group: they have been known to cause quite a stir when confronted with one too many BSODs.
Elsewhere, while we hope that the "Trotskyites against Teller Machine" fringe left group will remain silent after this latest provocation against computerized banking, we have a feeling the post-vacation blues in Greece are only just starting.