First, companies just began making shitty products. Use glued and compressed pulp instead of wood, use fructose instead of glucose, use bleached and desiccated wheat, use chips instead of anything mechanical, use cheaper less pure and thinner metals, etc. in the realm of food there was also shrinkflation.
Second, the USA exported much of its inflation as dollar imperialism.
Today, making products of less quality is nearly impossible without sacrificing sales, and the USA has run out of countries to add to its empire while simultaneously having sanctioned enough countries that they’ve now formed their own trading bloque. All of this means that dollars are staying at home after printing and that dollars are starting to come home from the rest of the world. This follows after the government shutdown parts of the economy and concomitantly printed trillions. So, there’s now rather high inflation once again.
Deregulation actually played less important a part of all of the financialization of the economy than did the transition to debt-based economics. The inversion of time in money is a dance with the devil, and the devil usually wins that dance.