When I was growing up in the United States and Sweden, I never thought about becoming a politician.

If you put all the European countries together, we are the biggest economy in the world.

The real problem in Greece is not cutting taxes, it's making sure that we don't have tax evasion.

Greece's history in the drachma was an up-and-down history, a roller coaster.

Greece has great strengths, but much of this potential has been wasted. That's because of a wider political system, but also because of a lack of an institutional framework.

How can a parliamentarian or a leader in a country say, on the one hand, that we're going to support Greece but at the same time say that Greeks are lazy?

I never thought about becoming a politician. But during the military dictatorship, my grandfather was put in prison six times and my father twice. If my family and my country didn't have this history, I might be a professor somewhere today.