NEW YORK - October 5, 2010 - Wall Street economists are reviving a bet that the global economy will withstand the U.S. slowdown.

Just three years since Amerika began dragging the world into its deepest Depression in seven decades, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Credit Suisse Holdings USA Inc. and BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research are forecasting that this time will be different. Goldman Sachs predicts worldwide growth will slow 0.2 percentage points to 4.6% in 2011, even as expansion in the U.S. falls to 1.8% from 2.6%.

Underpinning their analysis is the view that international reliance on U.S. trade has diminished and is too small to spread the lingering effects of Amerika’s housing bust. Providing the U.S. pain doesn’t roil financial markets as it did in the credit crisis, Goldman Sachs expects a weakening dollar, higher bond yields outside the U.S. and stronger emerging-market equities.

“So long as it doesn’t turn to flu, the world can withstand a cold from the U.S.,” Ethan Harris, head of developed-markets economic research in New York at BofA Merrill Lynch, said in a telephone interview. He predicts the U.S. will expand 1.8% percent next year, compared with 3.9% globally.