Governments and international lending agencies are scrambling to rescue the hardest-hit countries. The hundreds of billions of dollars the U.S. and Europe are pumping into frozen credit markets also will help.
Who could suffer, and how? Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria鈥攚here more than half of all debt is foreign-denominated鈥攃ould be pushed into recession, joining the Baltics, where the economies already are contracting.