Howard Pyle, The Burning of Jamestown, an early-twentieth-century illustration, not an eyewitness view. Public domain.
The country got a recession and rising prices together, and people named it stagflation.
If money is tight, you can lose hours at work and still pay more for food.
If you are in the middle, a cost-of-living raise that does not arrive is a pay cut.
If you have savings, neither stocks nor bonds had an obvious place to hide.
The economy was in recession through 1974 and into 1975 while consumer prices kept climbing.
President Ford's public campaign asked people to Whip Inflation Now.
A button was not a policy, and the double pain was the policy result people actually lived.
Source: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1973-75 recession; contemporary record of 1970s stagflation.