French Jobless Rate Falls as Hollande Takes New Mistresses

PARIS. France's unemployment rate fell slightly in the second quarter as new prime minister Francois Hollande gave the job market a boost by taking on four moderately-attractive mistresses.  "The policy of past regimes has always been to have one really bodacious mistress," Hollande told economists over a lunch of escargot et chocolat.  "Moi--I prefer to spread the wealth around by hiring more plus femmes who are only marginally beautiful and thus unable to find work in the highly competitive political mistress market."

Trierweiler: "I'm number one!"

Hollande is not married to either his current companion Valerie Trierweiler or Segolene Royal, the mother of his four children, which left him free to take on additional mistresses as a stimulus tactic.  "Now that I'm prime minister, I'm combing the babes out of what little hair I have left," Hollande told the economists.  "It is better that they service me than go on the dole."

Bastiat

French unemployment hit 10% in the first quarter, a worrisome sign to those who attribute magical properties to numbers ending in zero.  Hollande's economic views run counter to those of French economic journalist Claude Frederic Bastiat, who discredited the notion that a nation could pull itself out of a recession by dividing up available work among idle laborers rather than increasing efficiencies.  "It would be better if Hollande would simply reach climax quickly rather than fooling around with more women," said Jean-Jacques DeLong of Les Cahiers du Economique Sexuelle.  "That way, he has more time to screw up the economy."

Royal: "You're dumping me for that . . . that chien?"

Hollande's relationships have posed a problem for journalists from nations such as the U.S. where cohabitation outside marriage is viewed as scandalous.  "We could say his women are his amies, or perhaps his concubines," said Matthew Taylor of the Cleveland, Ohio bureau of Paris Match.  "We're also trying out the phrase le principal serrer, or 'main squeeze.'"