Part 1

I would separate out the two issues that you have brought up in your question i.e Anti trust laws and Financial Sector reforms culminating in the Glass Stegall Act because they arose out of very different reasons.

Firstly, the financial reforms. To understand it, we must understand the nature of crisis (I have explained the background here), it's impact because certain legislation that was passed by Congress during Roosevelt's presidency was prepared during Hoover's time and certain policies were in fact continuation of Hoovers. The reason is that without stabilization of the financial system it was impossible to use an effective fiscal policy.

To give a short summary they were paid through increasing growth that gave more tax revenue to the government and enabled it to engage in deficit spending. The Federal Government eliminated the gold standard which led to increasing money supply that ended deflationary pressures, creating FDIC that guaranteed savings which prevented further bank runs, establishment of government owned corporations that bought stocks in failing banks and resolving them to be later bought by up profitable banks and heavy investment in public projects.

The New Deal included three components as Wiki tells us- Recovery, Relief and Reform. It was not possible for providing relief and recovery without reform. The United States was facing an unprecedented economic disaster due to systematic breakdown of the financial system that was caused by failure of banks, deflationary pressure that was exacerbating the pressure of the recession by increasing the value of debt held by financial institutions, businesses and households and collapse of trade because of Smoot-Hawley tariff act that was passed inspite of the fact that the United States was in trade surplus and which reduced global trade from 30 percent of GDP to 10 percent of GDP. The Banking Act of 1933 passed by Roosevelt was closely related to Banking Act of 1932 and Re Construction Finance Corporation Act. The Corporation was established by the Federal Government by selling treasury bonds as a joint stock company which was to finance insolvent banks by lending them money so that they could pay depositors, buying assets which had long term value but had dropped dramatically in the short term which was to serve as collateral etc. This was managed by independent managers. It was modeled on the War Finance Corporation which was established by the Federal Government during World War 1. It's initial capital was $ 500 Million but was later expanded to $ 1.6 Billion as it borrowed that money from the US treasury and the public. This idea was also applied by Park Chung Hee in South Korea during the 1960's who set up similar policy banks to fund industrialization and which was also very successful.

The Banking Act of 1932 allowed the Federal Reserve to act as a lender of last resort by using government securities as a collateral in addition to gold and commercial paper. This was designed to beat deflation. Both the Acts succeeded in their objective. Industrial prices stopped dropping and reached pre crash levels by July 1932. This was why Roosevelt blasted Hoover for excess spending. The Federal Reserve had purchased an enormous amount of government securities reaching around $ 1 billion by the end of April 1932.When the act expired, the economy once again worsened paving the way for the Banking Act of 1933. It was already began to prepared by Hoover's team but passed by Roosevelt.

The previous act had led to large scale hoarding of gold and much of it had started going to Europe. The Reserve banks had required holding gold which amounted to 40 percent of paper currency they issued. Foreigners and domestic holders of paper currency were fearing that it would not be redeemed. Many banks were once again in the fear of suffering bank runs. The Federal Reserve governors requested President Hoover to close banks for some period of time but neither Hoover nor President Elect Roosevelt were sure about it. Ultimately, Roosevelt after coming into office on March 4 acted decisively ordering the closing of banks. Hoover's advisers and the governors of Federal Reserve Bank of New York had already put together a plan to restore credibility of the banking system.This was done by increasing money supply by holding the assets of banks as collateral instead of gold. Banks were divided into 3 classes - Class A, Class B and Class C. Class A banks were sound financial institutions, Class B were weakened from the crisis but would be able function and were to re open but continued to undergo a long period of resolution and Class C banks were to be permanently closed. This worked and after the banks were reopened there were more deposits than withdrawals. Currency held by the public had increased by $1.78 billion in the four weeks ending March 8. By the end of March, though, the public had redeposited about two-thirds of this cash.

Wall Street gave it's approval with the Dow Jones ending up 8 points at 62.10. Roosevelt ended up increasing the power of RFC by allowing it buy prefered stocks in some banks.The purpose to increase confidence such that they would start lending to businesses and guarantee by government allowed them to invest in more riskier assets rather than just holding safe treasuries. Later, many programs like public works were financed by the government in this way. As the loan re payment began the pressure on the RFC began to reduce. This increased public confidence, boosted industrial production and recovery. By the time the institution was closed in 1957, it had invested around $ 57 Billion through investments in large scale projects and failing banks, working with FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) so that open banks could take over failing banks and lost only $ 5 Million from two banks.