Many people have been pontificating, and patronizing, and moralizing, and scapegoating, saying you Greeks, you are the problem. I would say we Greeks have a problem. We are not the problem.

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.

Countries are not like financial markets. Social change cannot be executed as swiftly as credit-default swaps. You cannot sell short on social commitments and practical responsibilities.

We Greeks want change. We know there are problems in our system. We have great potential but we need to manage our country well. Now that hasn't been done over the last decades. And that is, of course, what we are paying for.

My hope is that we will turn Greece into maybe the most transparent country in the world with everything on the web.

Politics also means educating people. It's important to speak openly with our fellow Greeks, to tell them what our problems are and that we have to change something.