Which U.S. president signed the Glass–Steagall Act after the banking failures of the Great Depression?

Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Glass–Steagall Act after the banking failures of the Great Depression.

The Banking Act of 1933, commonly associated with Senators Carter Glass and Henry B. Steagall, separated commercial banking from investment banking and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Roosevelt signed it on June 16, 1933, during the first months of his presidency.

The law was part of the New Deal response to the financial collapse that followed the 1929 stock-market crash. Thousands of U.S. banks had failed, and public confidence in the banking system had deteriorated. Deposit insurance aimed to reduce destabilizing runs by protecting eligible deposits within statutory limits.

Glass–Steagall is often described as if it were a single simple prohibition. In reality, the legislation contained several banking reforms, and the separation provisions were later weakened before key parts were repealed in 1999. The act was a banking response to the Depression, not the original cause of the 1929 crash.