Is Goldman having any doubts?

Goldman Sachs, who recently forecasted a serious economic contraction for the US economy in Q2 and Q3 2008, may be tempering their pessimism a bit. Speaking about yesterday's retail report:

"Although the December retail sales report fell slightly short of consensus expectations, the official figures still show only a modest slowdown in consumer spending growth. On a year-on-year basis, sales still look significantly stronger than in March 2001, the start of the last recession. Since that recession did not include even a single quarter of contraction in real consumer spending, one might conclude that U.S. consumption is still very far from the outright contraction that we expect for the second and third quarter of 2007."

HT: Jimmy P.

ALSO: See previous post, "Retail sales better than you think"