It did not help that the Fed seemed incapable of even exerting its control over leading bankers, let alone over the crowd psychology of investors. At the end of March, it was announced that total broker loans had increased to almost $7 billion, and the market swooned. The fear that some drastic action from the Fed to curtail the amount of credit going into the stock market was imminent drove the rate on brokers’ loans to over 20 percent. Instead, Charlie Mitchell of National City Bank, himself a director of the New York Fed, defied the Board by calling a press conference and announcing that
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