--- title: "Jeff Bezos Warns People Not to Buy Expensive Things Ahead of Black Friday" description: "As the holiday season approaches, Jeff Bezos warns of a recession and cautioned consumers and business owners to slow down on making any big purchases." date: "2022-11-16" modified: "2022-11-16" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/jeff-bezos-warns-people-not-to-buy-expensive-things-ahead-of-black-friday" categories: - "Future Society" - "Jeff Bezos" - "The Industrialists" tags: - "Amazon" - "jeff bezos" - "the digest" --- # Jeff Bezos Warns People Not to Buy Expensive Things Ahead of Black Friday ![As the holiday season approaches, Jeff Bezos warns of a recession and cautioned consumers and business owners to slow down on making any big purches.]() *\Image: Getty Images/Futurism\* ## Holiday Holdout Amazon founder and billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos has warned consumers and small business owners to hold off on making expensive purchases ahead of the holiday season. "What I can tell you is the economy does not look great right now," Bezos said in a sit-down [interview]() with *CNN* released on Monday, after being asked by reporter Chloe Melas if the economy was in a recession. Bezos, seated with girlfriend Lauren Sanchez, contended that "if we're not in a recession right now, we're likely to be in one very soon." "Take some risk off the table... keep some dry powder on hand," he added. "If you're thinking about buying a large screen TV, maybe slow that down, keep that cash, see what happens." ## Hollowly Spoken It's probably not the advice you expected to hear from the man who owns and runs the online retailer that dominates Black Friday sales every year, in addition to its just-as-lucrative Cyber Monday sale which follows only days later. Bezos' sage words dropped not too long after [*The New York Times* reported]() that Amazon plans to lay off some 10,000 employees, mostly from its Alexa, retail, and human resources division, which would be one of the largest cullings in the company's history. So it looks like Bezos will be doing some penny pinching of his own, at the expense of thousands of workers — but probably not of his own wallet. In [another segment]() of the interview, Bezos gloated about how he was going to give away his massive fortune and that he'd be donating $100 million to singer and philanthropist Dolly Parton. Overall, the advice rings hollow, and seems more like the words of someone looking for a PR victory than of a magnanimous altruist. Still, if Amazon ahead of its usually moneymaking season is "\[battening\] down the hatches," as Bezos recommended others do in a [tweet](), things do start to sound a little grim. Of course, saving money isn't bad advice, but coming from a guy who, in the same interview, casually threw around the idea of [buying a whole goddamn football team]() — well, maybe he's the wrong person to be peddling it. **More on Jeff Bezos:** *[Jeff Bezos' Housekeeper Says She Had to Climb Out the Window to Use the Bathroom]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()