PARIS—French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde criticized ratings agencies Monday, blaming them for fueling the Greek debt crisis and saying she will authorize France's market regulator to monitor their activities.
Concern over Greece's financial disarray was amplified last week when Standard & Poor's cut its ratings to junk status.
In an interview with Le Monde, Lagarde said the downgrade 15 minutes before markets closed was "crime inducing" because it incited everyone who held Greek debt to offload it without thinking before markets shut.
"We must, of course, better control" ratings agencies with rules to keep them from downgrading a country in a "hasty, deplorable" way, she said in a separate interview with Europe-1 radio.
Lagarde defended a euro110 billion ($145 billion) loan package agreed to Sunday for Greece by European governments and the International Monetary Fund.
Lagarde insisted on Europe-1 radio that it is "not a donation, it is not a subsidy" but a loan to push Greece to clean up its public finances.
France will contribute 20.7 percent of the total or euro16.8 billion over three years, at a fixed rate of 5 percent, she told Le Monde, saying the rate of interest is equivalent to the 3.75 percent variable rate charged by the IMF.
That is higher than the 1.5 percent rate France is able to borrow at, reflecting the extra risk, she said.
"We did not want to lend at super attractive rates so as not to encourage the service," she said.
France will loan Greece euro3.9 billion this year, which won't require a change in planned French government bond sales. But in 2011, 2012 and 2013, France will increase its bond sales to cover the extra euro12.9 billion.
Lagarde goes later Monday to France's lower house of parliament to present a budget amendment allowing the government to release French aid funds for Greece.
She told Le Monde that European budget rules will need to be changed to include alert mechanisms to stop debt and deficits escalating, and to prevent competitivity differences between nations from growing.
"We didn't pay enough attention to the competitivity gaps between Germany on one side and between Greece, Portugal and Ireland on the other," she said. "These gaps are fearsome because they will grow."
She said that EU countries should be more determined to enforce the rules, which have been broken in the past, after paying a collective euro110 billion to deal with Greece.
