Sally Greenberg, the executive director of the National Consumers League, sees it as a massive, systemwide failure.
Her day as a computer programmer at Chase Manhattan Bank had skidded to an abrupt stop courtesy of a systemwide computer failure, and all employees got the afternoon off.
"We are in effect ramping up international political pressure on this unparalleled, systemwide failure in respect to human rights," Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, the American ambassador to the Human Rights Council, said by telephone.
The Senate Banking Committee did its part yesterday in putting to rest any concerns that Arthur Andersen might be made the sole scapegoat for the systemwide failure of the nation's accounting industry.
Judge Pauley found "systemwide failures" as a result of the welfare office conversion, and worse, "a culture of improper deterrence at job centers" that drove the needy away.
"On the contrary, the evidence pointed to systemwide failures resulting from H.R.A.'s hurried conversions," he added, referring to the Human Resources Administration.
"They could have intervened right from Day 1 because they knew the fetus was inviable, so why wait?" he said, adding that the testimony had pinned down systemwide failures but no personal responsibility.
The regulator would also have resolution authority — the power, if necessary, to seize and restructure critically ill bank holding companies and nonbank financial firms whose failure would pose a systemwide threat.
By September, the government faced a systemwide crisis.
Last summer, the transportation authority undertook a systemwide shutdown of the subways as the tropical storm approached.
