Regan did not want to do so, writing: "Although Lehrman was a capable, even a brilliant, man, I declined. I knew that he and I would clash because he would not be content to take a backseat. I wanted an administrator, not a person with policy objectives of his own." Lehrman was also considered for the post of Treasury Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs. Secretary Regan preferred monetarist Beryl Wayne Sprinkel. Unlike Sprinkel, Lehrman was critical of the floating exchange rate policies of Milton Friedman, the leading academic monetarist. Treasury Secretary Regan said he sought "the best monetarist I can get." Lehrman wrote several memos for President-elect Reagan on monetary and fiscal policy—including one entitled "The Struggle for Financial Order at the Onset of the Reagan Presidency". Another memo, co-authored by Congressmen David Stockman and Jack Kemp, was entitled: "Avoiding a GOP Economic Dunkirk". Conservative columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak wrote that "Stockman was deeply impressed by Lehrman's arguments and used them as the inspiration for his own more specific paper." Writing of the Lehrman memos, New York Times columnist Leonard Silk warned that if Lehrman was named to a Reagan Administration post, "this will point the direction in which the Reagan administration economic policy is moving. But it is not yet there and there is strong opposition among more traditional conservatives." With bank interest rates over 20 percent and annualized inflation rates approaching 15 percent, the economic emergency which Lehrman had first proposed and which had been subsequently endorsed by Stockman and Kemp was ultimately rejected. Rite Aid Corporation was an outgrowth of a family wholesale grocery business in central Pennsylvania, Louis Lehrman & Son, founded by Lehrman's grandfather Louis and expanded by his father Benjamin. On holidays as a teenager, Lehrman began part-time at the firm. He later worked summers and holidays at the company while continuing his education at Yale and Harvard before enlisting in the Army Reserves. In 1962 in Pennsylvania, the company began opening health and beauty stores; it was then a small-town competitor for both customers and store leases. Lehrman joined the company full-time in 1964—the same year the first Rite Aid pharmacy was opened in New York State. "Lehrman was forced to go from town to town, looking for older stores in downtown areas where landlords were more desperate for tenants, even unknowns," reported the New York Times. "Having found a site, he