Analysts applauded the selloff this quarter as the first clear indication that the Government is beginning to come to grips with the savings and loan crisis, easily the biggest financial debacle in the country's history.

The region's biggest debacle involving man-made structures began near Westhampton in the 1960's, when the Corps began a major groin-building project.

Mr. Hewitt said his biggest debacle was caving to CBS corporate executives who stopped him from broadcasting a 1995 Mike Wallace interview with a tobacco-industry whistle-blower.

Given its central role in controlling the damage of the biggest financial debacle in American history, the agency must be sensitive to often conflicting political pressures even as its mission is hampered by them.

It remains as one of the biggest debacles, both financially and commercially, for the Chiranjeevi-Raghavendra Rao "Hit" combination.

"When we came in, the biggest debacle we inherited was E-ZPass," Mr. Fox said.

In particular, the last big debacle in the stock market - the crash of 1987 - looms large in the minds of everyone who lived through it.

It is, by any measure, the biggest debacle in public finance in the United States since the Great Depression.

And then there was the biggest debacle of all, Dow Jones's purchase in the late 1980s of a financial data company called Telerate, for $1.6 billion.

"You had your big debacle on Friday, but it didn't take much to get prices back up again," said Larry Rice, chief investment officer at Josephthal, Lyon & Ross.