Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer David Solomon said there’s a “meaningfully higher” chance of a soft landing for the economy now than there was six months ago, echoing the sentiments of his peers that the US could avoid a serious downturn.
“The chance of our having a soft landing here as we go ’23 into ’24 is even higher than I thought it was six months ago,” Solomon said Tuesday at the RBC Capital Markets Global Financial Institutions Conference.
His comments came a day after Jamie Dimon, Solomon’s counterpart at JPMorgan Chase & Co., made similar projections for the US economy, saying it might escape a deep recession and that “we could still have a soft landing.” The Federal Reserve has been hiking interest rates to fight soaring inflation. Dimon pointed to challenges facing the economy including Russia’s war in Ukraine and the West’s relationship with China — headwinds cited by Solomon as well.
“I think you’ve got to be prepared for the fact that it could be more difficult than it is now,” Solomon said. “That doesn’t mean it has to be a train-wreck economic scenario. So far, the Fed seems to be doing a good job, but there’s a lot going on in the world. It’s an uncertain period.”
Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America Corp. said this week that he expects to “see a slowdown, which frankly, a lot of people are not going to see that much of.” It’s likely to “be more of a technical recession. It won’t be a deep drop in the GDP in the US,” he said.
--With assistance from Sridhar Natarajan.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.