Double standard? Sen. Jon Corzine portrays himself as a progressive corporate reformer but, under his direction, the Goldman Sachs investment bank may have been a leader in deceiving investors

While nothing yet has surfaced as clear evidence of fraud with regard to Enron at Goldman Sachs under Rubin and Corzine, it is a closer call for Citigroup, which now employs Goldman and Clinton alum Rubin. The New York Times has reported that Citigroup, where Rubin now is chairman of the executive committee, allegedly disguised loans it made to Enron as "commodity prepayments" to boost company earnings and keep shareholders from losing confidence. Citigroup reportedly was Enron's largest lender, and Rubin's phone calls could be "the real smoking gun in the Enron scandal," Foley says.

In addition to the call Rubin made to Treasury Undersecretary Peter Fisher asking him to persuade the credit-rating agencies not to lower Enron's rating, a managing director of the Moody's rating agency has come forward to say Rubin contacted him to try to stop the downgrade as well.

A Citigroup spokeswoman says the former treasury secretary was only exploring the option of getting the rating agencies "to consider delaying their downgrade. This would allow the banks a little more time to put in additional money and potentially stave off the bankruptcy." The spokeswoman claims Rubin had no knowledge of the commodity-prepayment transactions currently in dispute.

Some who have followed Rubin's career say his apparent effort to use his political contacts to "fix" the Enron crisis bear a striking resemblance to his actions while at Goldman Sachs in the eighties when one of his employees, Robert Freeman, was indicted in an insider-trading scandal. According to the book Den of Thieves, by Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal reporter James B. Stewart, Rubin led the firm's stonewalling of the investigation of then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani. "Rubin was furious at Giuliani's public humiliation of Freeman and Goldman Sachs," Stewart wrote. "As a Democratic fund-raiser, Rubin didn't intend to allow the Republican Giuliani to gain politically at the expense of Goldman Sachs."

Stewart wrote that the firm's internal investigation of Freeman, led by Rubin, "showed more interest in finding plausible alternative excuses for the trading in question rather than in determining whether [Freeman had actually received insider information]." Stewart reported that when Freeman finally pleaded guilty to one count of insider trading, Goldman Sachs issued a statement "attack[ing] the prosecutors rather than a partner who had just admitted a felony."

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs alum Corzine has become the point man for the Democrats in attacking Bush's plan for private Social Security retirement accounts, arguing that the current corporate scandals show the stock market is just too risky. "Privatization would take the security out of Social Security," Corzine said in a July press release. "If that wasn't clear before the current downturn, it should be now." Maier countered that what's really clear is that, for retirement savings to be secure, Corzine and his old firm must be held just as accountable as everyone else for their role in the current financial scandals.