Basically in the 1970's the US removed the GOLD STANDARD. Prior to that $1 was worth a certain amount of gold (I am not sure about the exact weight of gold that is worth $1). So in effect the US cannot print money if there is no gold backing it up. In order to print more money they have to find new supply of gold, so money was limited and prices were stable since money was stable too...

When they removed it (the gold standard) the Dollar collapsed really fast since now there is no backing it and they can print it indefinitely as much as they want. So when the Dollar collapsed, prices rise. At that time there was such high inflation something like 20%++ and Paul Volcker was forced to increase interest rates to 20%. That killed the economy but it didn't immediately kill inflation so there were a lot of job losses and business closures but prices didn't really go down with it since there is a lag effect... In short, it was bad since wala na ngang trabaho tumataas pa presyo. Unlike the Great Depression of the 1930's (by the way the economic slowdown in the 1970's was not as bad as the 1930's), the economy collapsed but there was deflation so the rich still were ok that time...