Crisis Spurs Call for Bigger Bailouts
Western Europe Leaders Want to Double IMF Fund to Help Eastern Neighbors

European leaders called for doubling the International Monetary Fund's war chest to $500 billion for bailing out financially stricken nations, amid new signs that Europe's former Communist east is sliding into a full-blown crisis.

Europe's developing economies are facing their worst economic trauma since the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. Capital is fleeing Europe's east, sending currencies sliding and threatening the region with deep declines in output and employment, and a deluge of debt defaults. Poland's industrial output in January fell at a painful 15% annual rate; its currency last week hit an all-time low against the Swiss franc.

Until the past couple of weeks, the turmoil mainly hurt Eastern Europe's most financially overstretched countries, including Latvia and Hungary. But collapsing currencies and markets even in previously robust economies, such as Poland and the Czech Republic, show that investors are fleeing the whole region.