This article studies the evolution of the credit policy of the Banque de France from the 1966 banking reforms to the 1981 victory of the Socialist Party. This evolution represents the beginning of the policies of financial and monetary liberalization that occurred in 1984. Starting at the end of the 1960s, free-market reformists attempted to abolish the interventions of the central bank in credit allocation, to push for the implementation of a more neutral monetary policy within a financial system where the allocation should be guided by free market forces and prices. This implied the creation of a well-functioning money market, the end of “credit selectivity” and the adhesion to the new free-market principles of the Plan for financing the economy. From 1971 to 1973, reforms started to be implemented in order to support the development of the money market and the end of credit activism. Yet the end of these reforms reinforced the criticisms of the system and of its “perverse effects” that were accused of impeding growth and fueling inflation. At the same time, the Banque de France implemented money targeting without adhering to monetarism, while it paradoxically ceased to believe in the monetary causes of inflation. This article focuses on the analysis of the arguments and discourses and it shows that the path to neo-liberalism mainly took place in a national context. It also shows that the opposition between Keynesianism and monetarism that is commonly used to describe this evolution is mistaken and confusing. The evolution is better described as the “disembedding” monetary policy from credit policy.