The Banking Acts of 1933 and 1935 changed the balance of power within the Federal Reserve System in favor of the Board of Governors, especially with regard to monetary policy. The Acts made clear the Board's power to set the discount rate and gave the Board a majority of votes on the Federal Open Market Committee, including the chairmanship of the Committee. The legislation also gave the Board new authority to set reserve requirements for banks and margin requirements on loans to purchase securities.
More fundamentally, the Depression demonstrated how the collapse of a banking system and severe deflation can wreck an economy. Subsequently, the high inflation era from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s showed how inflation can also damage the economy. The lessons of these episodes are: 1) that central banks must respond to financial crises that threaten the macroeconomy, and 2) that price stability should be the paramount objective for monetary policy because of the harm that deflation and inflation can do to the real economy.