Democrats, the guardian of the little man against greedy Wall Street...

The conventional wisdom is that the Republicans are anti-regulation and that they allowed the free reign of Wall Street to line their pockets. And no doubt there is a lot of truth to this.

The other conventional wisdom as that the sainted Democrats are in the trenches doing battle against Wall Street greed and their Republican allies for the betterment and protection of the little man on main street.

If you believe that about the Democrats, then watch the PBS Frontline report, "The Warning" which aired tonight. You can view it on the Frontline website.

One example... Brooksley Born was the Director of the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in the Clinton administration. Among other things, she was responsible for the regulation of financial instruments such as derivatives.

In 1998, Ex-Goldman Sach's executive and then Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, calls her to a meeting in his office to tell her to back off on her efforts to regulate the derivatives industry...

Robert Rubin said to her, "I am told that you do not have the jurisdiction to do this." And Brooksley said: "Well, that's interesting. That's the first time I've ever heard that. All my lawyers at the CFTC have assured me that we have the exclusive jurisdiction to do this." And Rubin said: "Oh, you're listening to government lawyers. You shouldn't be listening to government lawyers; you should be listening to private lawyers. All the private lawyers representing the banks say you don't have the jurisdiction."

This is the same Robert Rubin who pushed Congress and Clinton to repeal the Glass-Steagall legislation of the 1930s that prevented banks from also offering financial and investment services. Two months after Glass-Steagall was repealed, Rubin left Treasury to take an executive position with Citibank. And we all know what happened to Citi during his tenure as they jumped into all manner of financial products.

And all the current furor over egregious Wall Street executive pay? None other than Democratic wheeler-dealer, Robert Rubin received $127 million for his services while driving Citibank into the toilet.

Oh, and it's the very same Rubin, who after he left Treasury, sparked controversy in 2001 when he contacted an acquaintance at the Treasury Department and asked if the department could convince bond-rating agencies not to downgrade the corporate debt of Enron, a debtor of Citigroup.

In January 2009, Rubin was named by Marketwatch as one of the "10 most unethical people in business".

Who else eventually forced Brooksely Born out of the CFTC? None other than Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under Rubin, Larry Summers.

And what else has Summers done? During Summers' presidency at Harvard, the University entered into $3.52 billion of interest rate swaps, financial derivatives that can be used for either hedging or speculation. By late 2008, those positions had lost approximately $1 billion in value. This forced Harvard to borrow significant sums in distressed market conditions to meet margin calls on the swaps. The decision to enter into the swap positions has been attributed to Summers and has been termed a "massive interest-rate gamble" that ended badly.

Still more... During the California energy crisis of 2000, then-Treasury Secretary Summers teamed with Alan Greenspan and Enron executive Kenneth Lay to lecture California Governor Gray Davis on the causes of the crisis, explaining that the problem was excessive government regulation. Under the advice of Kenneth Lay, Summers urged Davis to relax California's environmental standards in order to reassure the markets.

Summers hailed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which lifted more than six decades of restrictions against banks offering commercial banking, insurance, and investment services (by repealing key provisions in the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act): "Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century," Summers said. Many critics, including President Barack Obama, have suggested the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis was caused by the partial repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act.

And what does Summers do now? He is the Director of the National Economic Council in President Obama's administration.

So are the Democrats the "Good Hands People" or the Dirty Hands People? Or just one and the same as the Republicans?