What makes Eastern Europe anxious is not only the lingering traces of Soviet power in the region, but the sheer proximity of an empire wracked by economic, political and ethnic convulsions.

Notwithstanding Mexico's economic convulsions last year, Telmex stock is now trading about about twice what SBC paid for it, and the company's long-term prospects appear good.

Since the beginning of the decade, all three of Chile's neighbors have suffered political and economic convulsions that have forced changes of government.

Russia's economic and political convulsions have not shaken its position as a cultural superpower.

Only one institution among the largest 10, Cullen/Frost Bankers, the seventh-biggest with about $3 billion in assets, has remained profitable and independent amid the economic convulsions in the state.

Currently it's the bank shareholders who are suffering much-reduced dividends, hanging on in the hope of good times when the economic convulsions are over.

Alas, Russia is again on the brink of political and economic convulsions.

His family moved from one economically hard-hit city to another as factories closed and businesses contracted, and he lived through the economic convulsions that he would later analyze.

The talks here are occurring while at least three countries are in political and economic convulsions.

But few other nations could cope with the sort of political and economic convulsions Russia has endured in recent years without going berserk.