History suggests that U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) policy either aided in the creation of or directly precipitated almost every U.S. recession and the majority of related large equity market selloffs over the last 100 years. However, the Fed missed the impact of the sterilization of gold and other broad economic data, which lead to a recession and cut the equity market in half. However, the 1970s cost-push inflation environment due to rising oil prices , coupled with the Fed's miscalculation of the output gap, created problems with the Philips Curve.