"She was not in the chain of command," one former Fed bank president told CNBC.
"Supervisory action taken by the San Francisco Fed staff would have been cleared by Washington."
Daly and Fed board officials declined to comment for this report.
San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly reacts at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council Town Hall, Los Angeles, California, U.S., October 15, 2019.
A review of what went wrong will likely point more heavily to Washington, its supervisory bureaucracy and the board leadership than to San Francisco.