NEW YORK — The holiday shopping season is still months away, but already a growing number of economists are predicting that it could even be worse than last year — which is to say disastrous.

Soaring gas and food prices, a slumping housing market and a falling stock market have depressed consumer confidence, raising fears that shoppers will pull back even more in the critical months ahead.

Consumer spending accounting for two-thirds of U.S. economic activity. While Americans have cut back on nonessentials like clothing, spending has remained fairly resilient despite their darkening mood. But once the short-term benefits of the federal stimulus checks fade, shoppers might retrench further — possibly tipping the economy into a recession.

"It makes us nervous," said Brooklyn resident Deanna Zammit of all the bad economic news. The freelance writer, who purchased a condo a year ago in Brooklyn with her husband John Miller, a product designer at an Internet software firm, said they are secure in their jobs, but that the slowing economy and inflationary pressures have forced them to pare down.

"I'm not going shopping at Macy's, and I am not buying any more summer clothes," Zammit said. "Food and gas prices are stinging us, and I am watching where things go."

Two downbeat reports released Tuesday — one on consumer confidence, the other on the housing market — show shoppers are under increasing strain. The Conference Board's Confidence Index fell for the sixth month in a row to the lowest level in 16 years, while the measure that assesses how well consumers expect the economy to fare over the next six months dropped to the lowest point since the private research group began doing the surveys in 1967. Shoppers are anxious enough that fewer of them plan to buy big-ticket items like TVs and appliances, according to the Conference Board report — a bad omen for Christmas giving.

Another set of reports — the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price indices and the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight index — showed record year-over-year drops in April, a signal that the housing slump is not only deepening, but encompassing markets that were once holding their own.

Meanwhile, American Express warned Wednesday that the consumer credit situation is worsening faster in June than it had anticipated, as the U.S. economy continues to falter.

"People are feeling poorer and that means less spending. ... The holiday season will be bad — if not worse than the last year," said Bernard Baumohl, managing director at the Economic Outlook Group LLC.

Baumohl added that while consumer confidence and spending don't move in tandem on a month-to-month basis, he believes that the persistent and precipitous fall in confidence will affect spending within three to nine months.

After sluggish sales last year, stores started seeing a boost in recent weeks from the rebate checks — but those benefits are expected to evaporate.

Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board's Consumer Research Center, said the holiday period doesn't "look too good" at the moment. "There will be a lot of heavy incentives" to get people to shop, she said.

Reacting to the malaise, retailers are paring back expansion plans and closing stores. J.C. Penney Co. announced Wednesday that it will now open only 20 new or relocated stores in 2009, down from 36 announced in April, and previous plans for 50.

Shoppers should also expect to see more focused holiday offerings as stores cut back on inventory. Dan Hess, CEO of research firm Merchant Forecast, estimates that retailers are paring back autumn orders by 15 percent from a year ago.