In the 1980s and 1990s, Americans began to believe that a well-run Federal Reserve could use the tools of monetary policy to keep the economy on a steady growth path with low rates of inflation. The Fed could not eliminate all recessions, but as long as it did its job correctly it could limit their length and depth to the point that a long, protracted economic decline was no longer probable. This point of view developed out of the hard won victory of monetary policy against inflation in the early 1980s, and out of a grand theoretical argument that fiscal policy, the primary tool for countering recession in the 1960s and 1970s, was flawed and ineffective.