As the financial crisis has spread from the developed West to emerging-markets economies, few places have been hit as hard as Central and Eastern Europe. Countries in the area had financed a consumer and investment boom with cheap credit from abroad in recent years, and the evaporation of global liquidity is squeezing them hard. Hungary and Ukraine have turned to the International Monetary Fund for multibillion-dollar bailouts, and Romania is expected to do the same soon, while the Baltic states are suffering one of the most severe recessions of any region.

In this maelstrom Poland stands out as an island of relative prosperity. The economy, which grew at an average annual rate of 6 percent over the past three years, has slowed sharply in the past six months but at least continues to expand — the government forecasts growth of 3 percent in 2009; private sector estimates fall mostly in...