Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act after the banking crisis surrounding the 1929 stock-market crash.
The law, formally part of the Banking Act of 1933, separated commercial banking from investment banking and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It was enacted during Roosevelt’s first year as president, after widespread bank failures had deepened the economic emergency.
The stock-market crash and the banking crisis were related but not identical. The 1929 market collapse damaged confidence and wealth, while later bank failures restricted credit and harmed depositors. Glass–Steagall was one of the New Deal government’s major responses to that broader financial breakdown.
The separation between commercial and investment banking was gradually weakened and was repealed in major part by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999. Some deposit-insurance and banking provisions associated with the 1933 law continued, so the later repeal did not erase every banking rule created in that era.