Romania isn't exactly a surprise either. A lot of Eastern Europe is in pretty bad shape. With Romania, their GDP dropped by approximately 20%, or $40 billion in in 2008/2009. Its only expected to go up by about $7 billion or so in 2009/2010[1].

I wouldn't consider myself an expert on this, but, my understanding is that a lot of the economic decline is due to a decline in tourism to Romania (well, to Eastern Europe in general, not just Romania) in the past year or two. And hotels/restaurants/etc account for ~20% of Romania's GDP, IIRC.

And the US is in a much better position than most of the world. We had what? Two quarters of negative growth of -2 or -3% at most before we're back in the plus? Compare that to countries that have been in double digit negatives for multiple quarters in a row.

The primary country that I'm really worried about in Eastern Europe is Bosnia-Herzegovina. Three ethnic groups that have distinct political parties and two of the three don't recognize the third. New government every few months and very little is done. Low GDP to start with, and its gone down even more in the past year or two. Its not too far fetched to imagine a situation like Kosovo in the 90's breaking out again..

[1] http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2010/01/weodata/weor...