UK's Brown urges credit crunch action on U.S. trip

By Sumeet Desai

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Plagued by crumbling popularity and slumping house prices at home, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown met with Wall Street bankers on Wednesday to urge them to come clean on their losses quickly to help end a global credit crunch.

On a three-day tour of the United States, which is already teetering on the edge of recession, Brown will also meet President George W. Bush on Thursday and Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke on Friday for their take on the market turmoil.

But with the British economy slowing and his poll ratings dropping at the sharpest rate for any leader since before World War Two, Brown is anxious to show he is in control of the economy he ran as finance minister in a decade of prosperity.

"This is a testing time," Brown said. "It is probably a testing week with all the results coming out."

Many are speculating that Brown could soon face a challenger for the leadership, particularly if his ruling Labour Party suffers huge losses, as expected, in local elections on May 1.

His finance minister and close ally Alistair Darling said in an news agency interview in China on Wednesday that the government needed a new focus.

Brown has remained defiant in the face of calls that people are losing confidence in him. He has said it is understandable that people are worried about their own well-being but he will make the economy his "sole focus."

To this end, he met senior bankers in London on Tuesday to discuss what steps might be taken to help end the credit crunch that has raged for eight months because of financial institutions' exposure to plunging U.S. real estate prices.