Choose your own monetary policy adventure!

Imagine that either the economy is in an expansion or a recession. In the next few prompts you will talk about responding to this situation, so choose wisely. This choice is yours to make, so please now state what is going on with the economy you are pretending to observe.
Would you use expansionary or contractionary policy to help the economy?
Why would you use the policy you mentioned in 2 above (i.e. what are you trying to affect or prevent)?
What changes could you make to reserve requirements, the discount rate, and in open market operations that could help you pursue the policy that is appropriate for the situation the economy is in?
How will the changes mentioned in 4 actually help the economy? In other words, how will the changes you want to make translate into real people making different decisions that will ultimately help the overall economy? You probably want to mention how the market for money is affected, how the interest rate might change, how people respond to changes in the interest rate, and how this behavioral change in many people can change the overall economy.