Thank you and good morning. I am the new guy in town. This is actually my first official speech as Ambassador to Sweden. If I make a mistake, you'll understand that I'm new at this. As Gunnar Hesse said, I like to mountain bike. I was mountain biking with President Bush back in May, and as some of you know who came to the 4th of July party, I fell off the mountain bike and broke my collar bone. It's much better now, and I went to my Swedish doctor (who takes care of the Swedish hockey team). Since I too am a world class athlete I wanted someone of that caliber to take care of me. He said that my collarbone was healed. I went out Thursday and bought a road bike, not a mountain bike, and on Saturday I rode around Lidingö and on Sunday I rode in Drottningholm, so I've finally been on my bike in Sweden. I had two great rides.

I'm trying to learn a little bit of the Swedish language and this was assisted by my injury. I learned the word "aj" which I'm told means "ouch." I learned "se upp" which is "watch out." Unfortunately, I didn't hear anyone say "se upp" in time to prevent my accident back in May.

You introduced me briefly. Let me take a moment here at the beginning to tell you a little more about me. I did start a company in 1976 with a man named Michael Hanley. The name of the company was Hanley Wood. The seminal moment for the business was in the housing recession of 1980. Interest rates were 18%, President Reagan had just become President, replacing Jimmy Carter and the U.S. was in a very bad recession. In that environment, no one was building homes. Our magazine was serving the homebuilding business. It was struggling. All the other magazines in the industry were struggling as well. There were two others. One was owned by the Association of Homebuilders. That magazine was called Builder. And one was owned by the publishing company McGraw Hill. That magazine was called Housing. About the middle of 1981, when this recession was quite intense, the Association approached us and said "We'd like you to buy our magazine. We want to get out of the magazine business; we can't afford to continue to carry the magazine." It was operating at a loss. Mike Hanley and I had always wanted to own our magazine, so we bought it.

Then about nine months later - every month we lost money, we had our houses pledged to provide the finance for the magazine - in May of 1982, McGraw Hill approached us. They had the other magazine, remember. The tried to buy Builder at the same time we did. We aced them out. McGraw Hill approached us. They said "You won the deal last year, but you've got to be hurting. Why don't you sell the magazine to us? You can run it; you can become employees of McGraw Hill. We'll make you whole, for whatever you've sunk into this magazine during this recession."

Mike and I were tempted. We thought about it, we were losing money every month, but in the final analysis we had always wanted to own our own magazine, so we said "Thanks, but no thanks". The McGraw Hill guy said, "Are you sure?" We said, "Yes, we're sure." There was a pause. Then he said, "How would you like to buy our magazine?"

So we did. And this company that no one had ever heard of, Hanley Wood, in the middle of that recession, bought two of the housing industries three magazines and combined them. That second deal closed in October of 1982. If you like at the historical chart, housing starts began to recover in November of 1982. So I guess it's better to be lucky than smart.

That was really the beginning of Hanley Wood. By the time we sold the magazine last year, we had over 30 magazines; we have 15 major trade shows in the construction industry, Internet sites that people visit, data on housing activity and sales, and features. It got to be a big company. The beginning was really back in the Paul Volker recession of the early 80s, when that story I told you took place.

As a businessman in Washington, I was very lucky when my friend from high school, George Bush, became President of the United States, because I was in town. It was easy for me to go over and smoke a cigar late in the afternoon, or lately, go on the weekends and mountain bike. I would get to go to Camp David; I would get to see him all the time because I just happened to live in Washington. It was a terrific experience. I have to say that a lot of people ask me, "How do you get to be an Ambassador? What kind of schooling do you take, what kind of experience do you have? The responsibilities are huge; you're the President's personal representative. How do you get to be an Ambassador?" All I can say is you have to be lucky and make the right friends in high school. At least that's what happened to me.

I'll tell you a couple of stories about my friend. I was from Flint, Michigan. It was a nice town at the time. It is sort of a sad story now. It was an automobile town, most of its economy was very reliant on General Motors. Some of you may have seen or heard of the movie "Roger and Me" that was made by Michael Moore. It was about Flint, Michigan. Twenty-five consecutive years of double-digit unemployment.

I wanted to go to Flint Central High School. That's where all my friends went. My parents wanted me to go to Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. It was a prep school. I had no interest in that, I didn't know anyone who went to prep school. But they made me go.

So I was there one night in September, shuffling down a path, mad, not wanting to be there, feeling sorry for myself, lonely, homesick, and this other guy came down the path in the opposite direction. I was wearing a pair of tied up pointy toed black shoes, which is what all the cool guys in Flint were wearing at the time. But they were really bizarre, pretty bad shoes. And this guy came the other way and looked at my shoes and said "What's up with those shoes, those are absurd." And I looked at his shoes, and he had cowboy boots on. And I said "Well look who's talking." And of course, that was George Bush. We became friends over shoes. And to this day, if he were in Stockholm today and he came in here, the first thing he would do is look at my shoes. So I always try to wear something strange so he'll be able to tease me. That was how we first met.

You remember the famous picture of the baseball player in the U.S., Willie Mays, who was very graceful. He had one catch where he ran away from home plate and caught the ball over his head. It's a very famous photograph. Willie Mays in that photograph is the best example of a great athlete making something seem easy. That's the way the President always was. It was always easy for him. It was easy for him in sports, it was easy for him in class, it was easy for him to quickly become the leader in any group, large or small. So unlike President Clinton or Al Gore or some of the other ones who in their minds when they were teenagers wanted to be President and were working on the resume that would allow them to be President, President Bush was not that way. He had a little bit of a bad streak to him. He was a fun guy. But he always had incredible, powerful, natural leadership skills. He made it look easy. I wasn't surprised when he became President. He seemed so outstanding even back in that day.

After September 11, six days after, the President called me and asked me to go to dinner. He wanted to demonstrate to the American people that it was OK to go out to dinner. This was September 17 and we went to a little place in Arlington called the El Paso Café, a Mexican restaurant. Nothing special, he likes Mexican food, so we went. Of course the press covered this, 'the President goes out to dinner.' After dinner we went back to the White House. He was outside walking his dogs, it was a beautiful night in Washington, cool, the stars were out. He was walking around and he said, "This changes everything. I know what I'm here for. I can't ever let something like this happen again." We talked about it for a while, and he said, "You know who the first foreign leader to call me when I got back to the White House was?" I guessed Tony Blair. No. It was Putin. Can you imagine, 15 years ago, in the middle of the Cold War, the Soviet Premier being the first one to call the U.S. President?

Of course, on September 12, the President sent Colin Powell to Pakistan. That's an area in the world where we had never really figured it out: Pakistan; India; and China. All the decisions we made in that part of the world were made in the context of the Cold War, "what's Russia doing, we want to do the opposite? Russia's a friend of India; we're going to be a friend of Pakistan. Russia's now with Pakistan, we're going to be with India. Russia's invading Afghanistan; we're going to support Pakistan." It was all sort of small-minded in the context of the Cold War.

The President sent Colin Powell to Musharraf and said "You're either with us or against us." Musharraf bravely decided to be with the U.S. Years later, I was in the car with the President going for a bike ride, and the phone rang. It was Musharraf, after the earthquake in Pakistan in October 2005. The President expressed the condolences of the American people, said we had seen the tragedy and were so sorry. He said, "As your friend, tell me what we can do." Musharraf asked him for 20 helicopters. The President said "OK, I'll get you 20 helicopters." He hung up, and then he called Condi Rice. And I'm in the car, and I said, "Am I supposed to be hearing this, do you want me to get out?" The President said, "Musharraf needs 20 helicopters. Get him 20 helicopters. He's our friend." That moment, I thought back to that night on September 17 when the President told me about how everything had changed and how Colin Powell had gone to Pakistan. Musharraf made that decision. One of the benefits of that was that he made a friend in President Bush. When he needed 20 helicopters, he got them.

One more Bush story. On June 6, I was sworn in. The President gave me a gift that day. He allowed me and family to come to Oval Office. It wasn't just a photo opportunity, although we did get a picture taken. He spent 30 minutes with my family. At the end of that, there was a rustling in the chamber where people wait to come into the Oval Office. Someone in my group had asked the President where his dogs were. The President said "Go get Barney." Josh Bolton was the new Chief of Staff. He went into the chamber to get Barney. And you could hear him say, "Not you Secretary Rice. He wants the dog." I thought he was kidding, but sure enough, it was the Secretary and the Vice President, waiting for the Woods to get out of the Oval Office so they could have their meeting with the President.

Now I'm here in Sweden as his representative. I love it here. I've been here for three months. I think there are a lot of stereotypes that Swedish people have of American people, and maybe some that American people have of Swedish people. Part of our business was headquartered in Washington, which is 50% African American. The population of our company was mostly white. It seemed odd that we would be located in Washington, 50% African American, and have no African American employees. So we did some outreach and tried to appeal to qualified African American people, and over time we developed a substantial proportion of our employees from that group. Even though most of the people in that company were well educated and open minded…to have a black woman doing the accounting was new. Stereotypes. The only way you break down stereotypes is that you are in meetings with the black woman, and after a while you forget that she's a black woman. The unfamiliarity breeds the stereotype.

I've met many of you already. I want to thank everybody who has been so warm and welcoming to me, in the private community and the government. You greeted me so warmly. I don't see any of the Swedish stand-offishness that you read about. Maybe it's there, but it seems like a stereotype to me.

I think that people I meet in Sweden have all these stereotypes of the U.S, 'all those homeless people,' 'old people dying because they don't have medication.' I think the way those stereotypes get broken down is through interaction. People see each other and are used to dealing with, in my case, Swedes, in the case of Swedish people, Americans. Then the stereotypes go away.

I understand I'm at an AmCham breakfast; you're trying to do business. I came from a business background, so I'm into it. Keith Curtis is the Commercial Counselor at the Embassy. Keith and I have already traveled quite a bit, and he's introduced me to a lot of you and a lot of other business leaders. I told Keith the first time I saw him that I was going to support his efforts to the degree that I can, and I would say the same thing to you. You do have a friend in the Embassy. If you ever need help, let us know. If you ever have an idea about things we could do work on together to solve problems about doing business in Sweden, it would be fun for me to participate in that.

I know that the U.S. is Sweden's number one customer right now, recently surpassing Germany. I know that we have substantial trade, over $4 billion dollars of trade exported from the U.S. to Sweden. Most of the people in the room would like to do more, Keith Curtis would like to do more, and I think the President would like me to do more. To the extent that we can, through networking or involvement in activities, help advance the ball, I would be enthusiastic about doing that.

Keith has quite an aggressive commercial program. We were in Lidköping last week. I think we got the government's agreement to participate with us in three different trade shows. One is the PowerGen show, electric power generation, in Orlando in November. We're going to sponsor a seminar there about alternative fuels, on where the next fuels are coming from. We're going to work with the government of Sweden to bring buyers as well as policy-makers to that seminar. Similarly, at the auto show in Detroit we're going to organize a similar seminar on what will be the fuel of the future, what will be the engine of the future in the automobile industry. Again with the cooperation of the Swedish government we're going to bring experts and buyers to the auto show. Similarly with the security show in Las Vegas, in about a year.

This is the kind of thing that we do. If any of that stimulates ideas that makes you want to call us and talk about the possibility, I want you to know that the door is open.

The last thing I'll say is that sometimes you have travel that you need facilitated. One of the most obvious parts of an Embassy is the consular section. I think we have a good one. If you have experiences where you are trying to get your people in and out of the country and you have a problem, that's another time when I want you to let me know. I can't give visas, but I can make sure that those who deserve them get them handled property. I know we take advantage of all the great technology available here in Sweden. Some 90% of those who apply show up with the printed form from the website. They've done it electronically, they've done all the preview work, they show up, there's a barcode on it, we scan it in, it's very quick.

One of the things I wanted to do when I came to Sweden was to identify one big thing that would be the major driving initiative of the U.S. Embassy while I'm here. Of course we have many objectives we want to accomplish, but what's the one big thing that can unify the entire Embassy and that people in Sweden would come to identify me with. I met with Keith and the others on the management team of the Embassy when I first got here and I asked them what they were working on that was most important. I got a list of about 50 things. I said, "What's the most important thing you're working on?" Out of that we got about 15. Some of them were the same things, just said a different way. So we ended up with 10. And now we're trying to decide among three.

If you're interested, I'll share what those three are, and maybe even take a quick vote. You can contribute in some way to our decision. Before you vote, I should tell you that I have asked President Bush his opinion of these three things, and Condoleezza Rice, and Undersecretary of State Nick Burns, who may not be as well known but is the number two person in the State Department.

The three finalists are, starting with the most difficult first:

Those are my three. NATO, democracy promotion, and a technology breakthrough tied to alternative energy. Why don't we vote? I will take the AmCham's unofficial but spontaneous opinion into consideration.

If you were me, how many of you would choose the objective of trying to persuade Sweden to join NATO? Second is democracy promotion. How many think that would be the best? The third was technology breakthrough on alternative energy…I didn't count, but it looks like that may be the one, certainly between number two and number three.

Thank you. We're finalizing our decision. I will let everybody here know what we decided to do. If I'm successful at it, you'll hear about it on the news and around town.