Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt handled the Great Depression vastly differently. Each president took a different approach at attacking the problem or perhaps some may say lack of attacking the problem.
Herbert Hoover wanted to let the situation fix itself. He believed leaving it alone would solve the problem eventually and that it was the people’s job to fix the issues, not the federal government’s or his own. He began proposing projects and encouraging banks and the people of the United States. The public did not respond well to this. According to https://hoover.archives.gov/exhibits/great-depression the public believed “His efforts to promote local relief programs, rather than asking Congress to create nationwide relief programs,
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Roosevelt had seen the public’s response and opinions to Herbert Hoover’s methods. The public blamed everything bad during the Great Depression on Hoover for example they named towns built by the homeless “hoovervilles”. Roosevelt wanted to take action. This would increase the power of the federal government more than ever and implement deficit spending like never before. His main approaches to attack the economy’s problems were through a series of programs called the New Deal. He created programs to open up jobs for people, set minimum wages, help the homeless and so much more. Roosevelt also wanted to protect the banks and restore confidence in them. He created a banking holiday, where every bank was shut down in the U.S. until the U.S. treasury approved it. The citizens could be confident in the opened bank, by the treasury’s approval to continue operation. He looked out for the youth through enabling them to earn money to help their family, but also further an education. Roosevelt also looked out for the old and disabled who could not work. He tried to alleviate the many troubling aspects through his terms. Some of his programs are still around like the Social Security System most people are familiar with today and the Federal Deposit Insurance corporation in