France's president: I have a confession to make AFTER a series of scandals under the outgoing centre-right president, Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande campaigned as the Socialist candidate last year with the promise of creating an "exemplary republic." After he won, his ministers were made to sign a charter of ethics. He cut their pay by 30%, and told them to swap their ministerial cars for the train. This model of modest virtue has, however, been shattered by the confession of Jérôme Cahuzac, the former Socialist budget minister who was also in charge of a crackdown on tax evasion, that he had lied about a secret foreign bank account to the president, parliament and the country. His admission has rocked Mr Hollande's presidency, and is threatening to undermine not only his government's moral authority but also its ability to get things done. The allegations of a secret Swiss account were dug up last December by Mediapart, a left-wing investigative-news website. Mr Cahuzac had held the account for 20 years, the website claimed, before transferring its balance to a new account in Singapore in 2010. Speaking before parliament that month, an indignant Mr Cahuzac denied anything of the sort. "I do not have, and have never had, a foreign bank account," he insisted. For months, he stuck to this story. Even in March, when he was forced to resign from the government after investigating judges had begun an inquiry, he vowed to clear his name, and his colleagues backed him. Yet on April 2nd Mr Cahuzac confessed to a stunned political establishment that he had been lying all along. In fact, he admitted, for 20 years he had held a foreign bank account, now containing €600,000 ($770,000). He said he had been caught up in a "spiral of lies," and he begged for forgiveness. Investigating judges have now laid preliminary charges against him for suspected laundering of the proceeds of tax evasion, which can carry a penalty of five years in jail and a €375,000 fine. Such was the consternation on the left that the delighted opposition had little need to chip in. Mr Hollande described Mr Cahuzac's lies as an "unforgivable moral fault," and vowed to bring in new laws to clean up French political life. Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister, called the lies "devastating" and added that French voters would now conclude that politicians "are all rotten." The left-leaning press, which had cheered Mr Hollande into office, was equally harsh. It was "worse than shameful, it was an outrage" wrote Libération in an editorial. Le Monde judged it "a lie that prompts a democratic crisis." Despite Mr Cahuzac's confession, many questions remain unanswered. Where did the money in the offshore account originally come from? Mr Cahuzac, a doctor, worked as an adviser to a Socialist former health minister between 1988 and 1991, and then as a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry. His lawyer said this week that most of the money had come from his work as a plastic surgeon (he specialised in hair transplants) but that "incidental" revenues had also flowed in from his consultancy. Moreover, what did Mr Hollande and his prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, know? Both insist that the answer is: nothing. Pierre Moscovici, the finance minister, says he had asked the Swiss tax authorities about Mr Cahuzac, but that they came back with nothing as well. Yet the suspicion is that, if these men did not know, they should have done. "François Hollande knew exactly what everybody knew," declared the co-founder of Mediapart, Edwy Plenel, who has known Mr Hollande for many years, on April 3rd. Although Mr Hollande is doing his best to dissociate himself from his former minister, it is nonetheless his own presidency which is now being put to the test. As it is, his popularity has sunk to record lows under the Fifth Republic. The French economy has seized up, and joblessness stands at a 14-year high. Morale has collapsed. Despite piling on extra taxes last year, France failed to meet its budget-deficit target in 2012, and has given up on its promise to get the deficit below 3% of GDP in 2013. Having made plenty of easy crowd-pleasing choices last year, Mr Hollande is now facing up to the hard part. The government has no alternative but to cut public spending, which is running at almost 57% of GDP, the highest ratio in the euro zone. It is toying, for example, with making reductions in family benefits for high earners and lengthening the number of compulsory years of pension contributions. The trouble is that such difficult choices require strong leadership and a persuasive voice that can make a convincing case for collective sacrifice. Yet Mr Hollande was lacking these even before the Cahuzac scandal broke. And one of the best advocates of budgetary rigour had previously been none other than Mr Cahuzac himself. On March 28th Mr Hollande went on television to try to show he knew what he was doing. He had a toolbox of measures to boost growth already in place, he insisted. The tools are there, they need to be used. The message flopped. Besides much mockery about Hollande the Handyman, opinion polls the next day showed that most of the French were unmoved. The Cahuzac scandal may not be the only one to sap the president's authority. On April 4th Le Monde revealed that Jean-Jacques Augier, formerly Mr Hollande's campaign treasurer, had corporate investments in the Cayman Islands. The revelations may not be over yet.