President Herbet Hoover was America´s 31st President and he governed since 1929, until being defeated by Franklin D Roosevelt in 1932. One of the most important challenges that Hoover had to face during his presidency was the Great Depression of 1929, which plunged the entire country into a version of doomsday where people faced real poverty to the point of starvation and total absence of job opportunities. One of the criticisms sent Hoover´s way was that people insisted that he did not pay enough attention to the signals that foretold the great plummet of the U.S economy since before 1929 and that he did not take the necessary steps to prevent this tragedy from happening. Also, he was accused of not using the full power of the federal government to give relief to struggling Americans. Although later he did institute several economic policies that helped to boost the economy and restore it, he was not a great believer in federal intervention and thought it was better that efforts be made more at the individual level and through acts of voluntary work. Still, later research has shown that Hoover implemented several, very successful policies that became the basis for the New Deal. One of the most important was the expansion of the federal government´s action in: federal spending, agriculture, wage policies, immigration, international trade and taxation. Just as an example, in federal spending, Hoover increased the total amount by more than 2 billion dollars and the second was an increase of control over agricultural activities by the federal government.