But it doesn't seem that Ireland or Iceland have been destroyed by the scale of their financial implosion.

In this holiday season, the financial implosion of so many dot-com retailers seems particularly cruel.

I started work on "Capital," the novel from which "Expectations" is taken, around the end of 2005, and so I was following the financial implosion in more or less real time.

Though 51 percent of the company is still owned by the government, its revenues in a few days dwarf the sums involved in the country's financial implosion of the 1990's.

In fact, things got so bad that the theatre's board decided to cancel its 2011 season in order to try and prevent a full-on financial implosion.

The bank's financial implosion in 1991 was one of the biggest economic disasters to hit in the state.

But other evidence entered by the government showed that concerns about possible implications of the financial implosion at Enron began to spread through Andersen soon after the company's troubles became evident.

That ultimately left the company at risk of a financial implosion when the cycle finally ended, after regulatory objections scuttled WorldCom's attempted acquisition of Sprint in 2000.

Only a huge emergency loan saved Mexico from a financial, and probably political, implosion.

However, the financial implosion of the state-owned production studio Avala Film amid galloping inflation in FR Yugoslavia put an end to that project.