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.

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.

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

I never thought of politics as a profession.

Very often, people will come out and say, 'Greeks aren't doing things, Greeks aren't making changes, there's no reform,' That is hogwash. We have made a huge effort. The Greek people have made a huge effort.

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

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