The U.S. housing market still has a long way to fall — and with it the nation's economy — and China's economy won't cushion the blow as it did in the 2001 slump.

That's the view of two top economists scheduled to make presentations this week at CERAWeek, Cambridge Energy Research Associates' annual energy forum in Houston.

Robert Shiller, the Yale economist who is widely credited with the earliest warnings of the subprime mortgage crisis, said signs are pointing toward steeper declines in U.S. home prices. Average home prices fell by 8 percent last year, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index based on 20 big American cities.

"This may be a major turning point where we see years of falling home prices and economic decline," Shiller, an originator of the Case-Shiller index, said in an interview with the Chronicle.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/5526574.html

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