Teabaggers would probably find this Charles Ferguson-directed documentary instructive. Of course, the likelihood of them watching it is virtually nil.

But if they did deign to pull their heads out of their asses for the 108 minutes it would take to watch this film, they would learn how the seeds for the financial meltdown that occured in the U.S. in the fall of 2008 were planted decades earlier during the Reagan era when Milton Friedman and his Monetarist hordes persuaded Republicans to dismantle banking and investment regulations that had been in place since the 1930s when the Democratic administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted desperately needed financial reforms to help the country escape the Great Depression.

Under Reagan, the U.S. began the treacherous slide back to the unregulated market conditions of the 1920s where individuals, wealthy and otherwise, and institutions were permitted, and even encouraged, to engage in unsound economic practices that led inevitably to crises like the dotcom bubble and the subsequent mortage debacle that cost not just Americans, but people worldwide, over $20 trillion.

Inside Job runs at the RPL Theatre tonight at 7 p.m. Here’s the trailer.