Bezos warns it’s time to ‘batten down the hatches,’ noting economic signals

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Tuesday weighed in on the state of the economy, warning it’s time to “batten down the hatches” as a recession may lie ahead. 

“Yep, the probabilities in this economy tell you to batten down the hatches,” Bezos said on Twitter.  

The online retail giant’s founder shared a video of Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon telling business owners to be cautious and “expect that there’s more volatility on the horizon.”  

Bezos’s alarm bells add to a growing number of prominent voices cautioning that a recession could be pending.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Monday forecasted the U.S. will fall into “some kind of recession” before the end of next year.  

A Wall Street Journal survey released Monday found that nearly two-thirds of economists believe a recession will occur in the next year, and a recent KPMG survey found nearly 9 in 10 global CEOs expect the same.

The United Nations earlier this month warned that efforts from the U.S. and others to control high inflation could kick the world economy into a global recession, and the heads of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank echoed that the danger is real. 

And while a recession is measured by two straight quarters of economic contraction, the United States has seen one defining feature that gives forecasters pause: a hot job market.

“You just can’t call it a recession when you have the ratio of vacancies to unemployed workers the highest it’s ever been. I mean, that’s just so far from a recession,” Jeffrey Frankel, a former member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the agency that designates recessions, told The Hill.

The U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks have been trying to tamp down high inflation with aggressive interest rate hikes, prompting worries that the efforts could inadvertently slide the U.S. economy into a recession.  

A part of the Fed’s economic policy is aimed at tightening the job market, a strategy meant to combat high prices.

The chief economic adviser of Allianz, Mohammed El-Erian, has said the U.S. in particular is headed toward a “damaging recession that was totally avoidable.” 

Running counter to Bezos’s warnings Tuesday, President Biden earlier this month said he didn’t think Americans should prepare for a recession, and that if the country does face one, it will be “very slight.”