History
There was no federal agency that could make massive loans to critical sectors of the depressed economy. To address these problems, President Herbert Hoover asked and Congress passed the Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act of 1932 with broad bipartisan support. Hoover signed the Act into law on January 22. Like the Federal Reserve, the RFC would loan to banks, but it was designed to serve state-chartered banks and small banks in rural areas that were not part of the Federal Reserve System. Another distinction was that the RFC could make loans on the basis of collateral that the Federal Reserve and other lenders would not accept. The related Banking Act of 1932, signed on February 27, broadened the Federal Reserve's lending powers, and gave it the power to make national policy to mitigate the problems with the economy. Eugene Meyer, who had pushed for both pieces of legislation, after heading up an organization similar to the RFC during World War I, was a governor of the Federal ...
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