LONDON - MORE than two-thirds of US voters and the majority in some European countries think their government has handled the financial crisis badly, according to an opinion poll published on Saturday.

As world leaders met in Washington to discuss the worst economic turmoil since the 1930s, a survey for the Financial Times newspaper suggested voters are unimpressed by their response the economic turmoil.

Four out 10 of those polled rated US President George W. Bush's personal performance as 'terrible', while another quarter thought he was 'poor'.

The US government's response was deemed by 68 per cent to be poor or terrible and less than five percent thought it had done a good job.

European leaders and their governments fared only slightly better.

More than half rated British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's performance as poor, while only a fifth thought the former finance minister had done a good job.

Nearly a third of those polled in Italy and Spain thought their respective leaders - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero - had performed 'terribly'.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel did better, with those polled evenly split on whether she had done well or badly.

French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the current holder of the rotating European Union presidency, was deemed by 37 per cent of people to have been doing poorly. Only 28 per cent said he was doing well.

They were also among the most pessimistic about the economic outlook. More than three-quarters expect their standard of living to fall in the next year, compared to 44 per cent of those in the United States.

Research company Harris questioned 6,257 adults online in the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain between Oct. 29 and Nov. 6. -- REUTERS