Europe's economy doing better than US

Stuart H. Loory: It’s no secret that the economic crisis has spread from the United States to the rest of the world. Europe has been hard-hit. Ireland faces an economic meltdown similar to that in Iceland and so does Hungary. Latvia is also in economic crisis and no help is in store for it. All this has raised fear that dissolution of the European Union could be in the offing. Countries not yet members of the EU but closely tied to it, such as Ukraine, are also in grave trouble. Ukraine has borrowed huge amounts of money from banks in the EU and if it defaults on its loans it could bring serious problems to banks in Austria and Sweden. The Western countries are refusing to accept guest workers from Bulgaria and Romania, both new members from Eastern Europe. How can this crisis be handled and what happens if it is not? How serious is this crisis for the EU? Is it really in danger of dissolution?