Recession warning: Bezos says to 'batten down the hatches'

Feverpitched

Americans should brace for a recession, according to Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos, who has become the latest to warn about doom and gloom on the horizon. "Yep, the probabilities in this economy tell you to batten down the hatches," he wrote on Twitter, in response to a CNBC interview of Goldman Sachs' CEO. In the clip, David Solomon cautioned businesses to think more cautiously and to factor volatility into their economic outlooks.

Snapshot: Many have recently been warning of a coming U.S. recession, like JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who said that the storm could arrive in the next six to nine months amid "very serious" headwinds like inflation, rising interest rates, quantitative tightening and the war in Ukraine. "The worst is yet to come," the IMF added last week, saying the U.S. economy will continue to stall. Even President Biden conceded that a recession is a possibility, but only expects it to be "very slight" if it occurs.

Many company executives are likely to internalize Bezos' message as he is someone who clearly has his finger on the pulse of many parts of the economy. Not only can he size up transactions taking place in the retail space, but Amazon Web Services (responsible for the bulk of the company's profits) supports nearly a third of all cloud businesses worldwide. With stocks in a bear market, Goldman Sachs recently screened for stock bargains for a recession.

Outlook: The U.S. is already in a technical recession following two straight quarters of negative real GDP growth (-1.6% in Q1 and -0.6% in Q2). Any decision on a formal recession is left up to NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee, which has been responsible for setting the dates of peaks and troughs of the U.S. economy since 1978. The funny thing is that the committee generally waits a while after a recession has begun to officially pronounce it, and on occasion, even after it is already over.