French President Nicolas Sarkozy secured a small boost from the Moody's rating agency Monday following a bruising downgrade last week of the way the country had been handling its economy and the wider European debt crisis. Moody's said Monday it was maintaining France's top triple A rating and stable outlook, just days after rival Standard & Poor's downgraded the country's debt over concerns that its economy and Europe's ability to get a handle on its debt woes. Markets seemed to shrug off the S&P downgrade, which had been expected for weeks. Many analysts had predicted that France wouldn't be overly punished for it, since the amount it pays to borrow was already among the highest of countries with the top-notch rating. Though Friday's downgrades, which hit several countries that use the euro, seemed to be having little immediate effect in the markets, they served as a reminder that the eurozone still has a long way to go to deal with its two-year debt crisis. This week's first hurdle was cleared as France easily sold about €8.6 billion ($10.9 billion) of debt with very short maturities. Just over half of that was in 12-week bonds, for which investors demanded an interest rate of 0.165 percent, up from 0.023 percent at an auction two weeks ago. The country also sold 25-week and 51-week bonds. There were no direct comparisons for those bonds in recent weeks, but the interest rates demanded were in the range of similar recent auctions.
