On February 5, Harrison, fortified by his discussions with Norman, himself went down to Washington and proposed exactly the Norman strategy to Young. He rejected the idea that his old chief, Strong, had been advocating in his last few months—that the Fed should passively sit by and “let the situation go along until it corrects itself.” Instead, he now pressed for “sharp incisive action,” a rise in rates of 1 percent. He had come to the conclusion, as he would put in later, that it would be better “to have the stock market fall out of the tenth story, instead of the twentieth later on.” Once
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