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WASHINGTON — The share of Americans who think the Federal Reserve is doing an excellent to good job has sunk even as chairman Ben Bernanke has taken unprecedented steps to try to prevent a financial catastrophe, according to a new poll released Monday. Many analysts credit Bernanke's unconventional approach with averting disaster last year. But his support of taxpayer bailouts of big financial firms such as insurance giant American International Group upset the public and many lawmakers. The Gallup poll, conducted in mid-July, found that only 30 percent rated the Fed as doing an "excellent/good" job. It was the lowest such score out of nine government agencies. And it was down sharply from the 53 percent who thought the Fed was doing an excellent to good job in a survey in 2003. At that time, then-Fed chief Alan Greenspan was steering a fragile economy back from the 2001 recession, terror attacks and corporate accounting scandals that had rocked Wall Street.