Indicators for next year are weak and home prices may resume declines, Harvard University economics professor Martin Feldstein said.

“The recession isn’t over,” Feldstein said today in an interview on Bloomberg Radio in New York. “It will be a while before we have enough information to know if the recession ended.”

Feldstein is a former president of the National Bureau of Economic Research and remains a member of the group’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, the panel charged with determining when recessions begin and end. His comments are at odds with those of the panel’s chairman, Robert Hall, who said early this month that the recession may have ended.
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Regarding the residential property market, where the recession initially emerged, Feldstein said the Obama administration’s effort to revive the housing market is a failure and home prices will continue to decline.

“It was just not well enough designed,” Feldstein said. “They ended up failing.” That suggests the housing slump will “continue to push down house prices,” he said.

“We saw a little pause in home-price declines in the summer but I think that was because of the first-time home buyers program,” Feldstein said. “We’re not going to get that boost.”