Herbert Hoover created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation during the crisis after the 1929 crash.
Hoover signed the Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act in January 1932. The corporation was designed to lend to banks, railroads, and other financial institutions so that credit would remain available during the Great Depression. It represented a significant expansion of federal involvement in financial stabilization.
The agency did not prevent the Depression from deepening. Bank failures, deflation, unemployment, and falling industrial production continued, and the stock market remained far below its 1929 level. Critics also argued that the corporation initially assisted institutions more visibly than ordinary households.
Franklin D. Roosevelt expanded the Reconstruction Finance Corporation after taking office in 1933, so the agency is sometimes associated with the New Deal. However, its creation belongs to Hoover’s presidency, before Roosevelt’s inauguration.