Expansionary AND Contractionary Policy

I've always been a believer in the cliché saying, "you learn something new everyday", and monetary policies are one of those new things. I always knew of the expansionary policies, and trying to get more money into the economy, and that's probably because I've only been capable of understanding economics during a recession. Recently, in my economics class, I was introduced to the contractionary policy. I never really understood why the government would want to slow growth of the economy, but now I know there is such thing as too much growth too quickly. This is where the contractionary policy comes into play; it reduces inflation, stabilizing prices.