Against a complicated macroeconomic environment, what are business leaders most focused on in

2023?

To some degree, I think CEOs feel like the economic construct that we're going to operate in for a period

of time is resettingting and they're therefore thinking

strategically about how that impacts them and they're operating with a little bit more

caution. I'm Allison Nathan and this is exchanges at Goldman Sachs. Today we're sitting down with a very special guest David Solomon, our own CEO and

chairman of Goldman Sachs. We'll talk about his views on economic growth in the

markets, the firm's strategic priorities, and what he'll be most focused on ahead. I look forward to this

conversation. Welcome back to the program David. Thank you very much. Allison's

great to be with you. So let's start with your views on the macroeconomic

environment. 2022 was a difficult year by all accounts.

And at one point you, and I would venture to say

the market, seemed pretty concerned

about the economic outlook for this year as well, but that seems to be changing maybe a bit.

Is that true? What are your views on the macroeconomic environment at this point?

So I think there's no question, Allison, that if you look back over the

course of the last six to nine months and you're surveying a broad group of

CEOs running big global businesses, the sentiment around the likelihood of a very difficult economic recession has

certainly softened. If we were sitting here last June or July, I think I would

have advocated that in the distribution of outcomes, the likely outcome was

that we saw a real recession in 2023 and that inflation was at quite high levels.

It was going to take a very significant tightening to try to get

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