[fable]

Have you heard the one about Herve Gaymard? He's the current French Finance Minister, a very powerful man, with ambitions on the top job. It seems that some newspapers uncovered the fact he'd been renting a huge luxury apartment ($18,500/month) in an exclusive section of Paris, furnished it and bought weekly groceries for it, all on the public dole. Asked about this in an interview by several media (including television) a week ago, Gaymard insisted that if he was one of the "wealthy bourgeois" such as some of his colleagues, he could simply buy his own home, but he was relatively poor, had eight children, and was the son of a shoemaker.

That may be. However, it's now emerged that Gaymard already owns another large apartment in a fairly ritzy area, that he rents out to others at more than $3000/month. Of course, it's only one-third the size of the one he's living in now, and has only four bedrooms. And apparently four other luxury homes owned by the poverty-stricken Finance Minister, throughout France, have been uncovered by reporters in the last couple of days. He's expected to resign, soon. Even the French government, which always stands behind its ministers, has turned its back on this one.

But he's hardly the first politician to live ostentatiously, and try to disguise his wealth. He's just more stupid than most others. Remarkably stupid, when you think about it. What could lead a person who's obviously very wealthy, right at the top rungs of national power in a powerful land, to still try to squeeze the national coffers for his support? Do you think he felt his amount of work, brains and connections were helping France so much, that he deserved something more than the enormous perks he otherwise received? Or was Gaymard just reflecting the cynical "we're industry, we rule, you owe us" attitude that has swamped big business of late, with corporate executives in the US, the Netherlands, Germany and elsewhere receiving highly publicized multi-milion dollar bonuses while workers are refused yearly adjustments for inflation? Or was there some other reason that this obviously intelligent, powerful man would do something so inordinately stupid, not to mention, ethically repugnant?