The New Deal "How well did the New Deal combat the Depression?" I think that the answer to this question is that it did very well and I would give it a grade of When Roosevelt took office, in 1933, he had three goals in mind, to save the banks, save the people, and to rebuild the economy. He set his sights on returning the banks to their prosperous days of the pre-depression age. Since the beginning of the Depression, banks were closing faster than the people could withdraw all of their money. He countered this by closing all the banks and had Congress pass an Emergency Banking Act that m