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

Markets are saying pretty much what I'm saying too: that Greece is doing what it can, but that Greece is not going to be able to carry the weight of all of Europe and the other problems that Europe has.

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

If Greece had gone through a very normal political life, I may have not been in politics. But just the fact that I lived through huge upheavals and very difficult struggles and polarization and the barbarism of dictatorships - that made me feel that we had to change this country.

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.

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.

Greece has given Europe the opportunity to fix a defect in the euro zone, that is the fact that we did not have a fiscal union. Now steps have been taken to begin that process. And there is more solidarity from nation to nation, and that is a good thing. That has been Greece's gift to Europe.