Minimal government regulation of the stock exchange and unsound financial practices created unrealistic expectations among speculators. The collapse of share prices on Wall Street in the fall of 1929 ruined many and destroyed the savings of thousands more. From 1929–1933 a downward spiral of economic shrinkage, bankruptcies, factory closings, and rapidly worsening unemployment occurred. Drought in the Great Plains states added the Dust Bowl to this catalogue of woe. President Hoover, elected in 1928, became the scapegoat for these disasters.