The French, like the English, may not like to talk about money, but they have an appalled fascination with it. And with budget austerity in the air here and 'new taxes' a forbidden phrase, President Nicolas Sarkozy is instead focusing on symbols -- canceling state garden parties for Bastille Day, ending presidential hunts at Chateau de Chambord and pushing his ministers to reduce their lavish expenses and bloated staffs. This change of heart, or strategy, as the more cynical here characterize it, follows on a series of embarrassing disclosures of ministerial misbehavior. Earlier this year, the junior minister for cooperation and Francophony, Alain Joyandet, citing a tight schedule, spent $142,000 on a private jet to attend a Haiti reconstruction conference in Martinique. Prime Minister Francois Fillon then instituted new oversight rules for such travel. Christian Blanc, the junior minister for development of the Paris region, charged the state around $15,000 for Cuban cigars, which Fillon ordered him to repay. Other ministers have been under scrutiny for how they use the Paris apartments provided to them by the state -- either living in what are meant to be apartments for professional use only or letting family members and friends use the apartments, and the staff. Then the former housing minister, Christine Boutin, had to give up an extra monthly paycheck of $11,500 she was getting for a study of globalization commissioned by Sarkozy. And then during the World Cup, a junior sports minister, Rama Yade, criticized the French team for staying in an expensive hotel in South Africa, when it turned out that the state had prepaid more than $800 a night for a junior suite for her. She then chose to stay at the French Consulate and finally, in the uproar, at a guesthouse. All of these minor flaps have come as the euro has been under crisis and the government budget deficit has come under new scrutiny. While hardly at Greek levels, the French budget deficit this year is estimated by the European Commission at 8 percent of gross domestic product and its cumulative debt at 83.6 percent of gross domestic product. And there have been regular strikes and demonstrations against government plans to try to fix the bloated pension system by raising the retirement age. Sarkozy finds himself trapped by the embarrassing situation of his former budget minister, no less, who shares the president's pleasure at hanging around with the rich. The minister, Eric Woerth, has done, it seems so far, nothing wrong. But his wife, Florence, worked as a financial adviser for the second richest person in France, the heiress to the L'Oreal fortune, Liliane Bettencourt, who was secretly recorded by her butler talking to other financial advisers about gifts to crucial politicians, payments to Sarkozy's party and, most damaging, how to dodge taxes by sending up to $100 million to Swiss bank accounts. Florence Woerth worked to invest the Bettencourt millions, and there has been no suggestion that she or her husband knew about the tax dodging, let alone aided or abetted it. But not only did Eric Woerth run the budget, but he is now the Labor Minister and the main author of Sarkozy's plans to raise the retirement age in France and reduce the debt of the overloaded pension system. He is also the treasurer of Sarkozy's political party, and the main organizer of Sarkozy's quarterly meal, at the three-Michelin-starred Hotel Bristol across from the Elysee Palace, with the president's wealthy supporters, according to the newspaper Le Parisien. For Segolene Royal, the Socialist candidate who lost the presidential election to Sarkozy in 2007, it is all of a parcel. The scandals, she said, show that 'the Sarkozy system is corrupt' and that 'the state mixes private and public goods.' She called it 'a collapse of moral values.' The Socialists, who are just now sensing the possibility of beating Sarkozy in 2012, are going after Woerth. They suggest that no senior minister, let alone the budget minister, could have been unaware of any dealings with one of France's largest taxpayers, and that he should have been aware of a conflict of interest in the job of his wife. (She recently resigned, raising yet another issue, this time of sexual equality and fairness.) Sarkozy and Fillon have fiercely defended Woerth, and Sarkozy has tried to deflect public unhappiness with a letter ordering his government to cut its expenses and trim back its 'train de vie,' or lifestyle. 'The state, more than ever, must set an example,' he wrote. He canceled the traditional Bastille Day garden party at the Elysee Palace, which last year cost roughly $1 million, and ministers of other crucial departments, like Foreign Affairs and Interior, quickly followed suit. The state will stop paying the rent on private housing and for personal expenses; ministers and junior ministers will take trains rather than planes and sleep in embassies rather then hotels; the state will cancel its annual hunts, sell some airplanes and reduce by 10,000 the number of cars it provides and by 7,000 the number of apartments or houses. And ministers will have to reduce the number of their personal staff to 20, and junior ministers to four. For busy ministers, that is an annoying burden. The popular finance minister, Christine Lagarde, rather impolitically expressed reluctance to lose eight members of her staff. 'I have 28 advisers, and they work like mules,' she said. 'We cover issues from small companies to labor to taxes to banks to G-20 to European matters.' As for the budget deficit, 'it's not eight advisers fewer, if that should be the case, who are going to bring down the debt, that's clear,' she said. 'It is a symbol that we have to be careful with our spending, and if I have to do it, I'll do it.' Elie Cohen, a senior economist and director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research, estimated savings in the tens of millions. 'It's derisory compared to the 100 billion euros the state must find to reduce state deficits,' he said. But in the current climate, he said, when pension reform is considered both necessary and unjust, and the political class is seen to behave badly, 'it was necessary to take the political initiative.' 