After President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, the economic state of the country seemed hopeful: Americans were beginning to emerge from the financial wreckage of the Great Depression, and unemployment rates dropped more than 10% in just a few years. In 1937, the nation was hit by yet another period of economic downturn, during which unemployment spiked once more. A number of federal economic decisions, such as switching to a contractionary monetary policy, impacted inflation and led to relatively high gas prices."