Could AMZN, currently trading for around $1140, fall to $400 a share or lower?  You bet.  Not tomorrow, next week or even next month or year. But eventually. Investors should prepare for it, since Amazon Inc. seems destined to become a scapegoat for our collective miseries during the next economic downturn. For now, however, the company’s increasing dominance in retail is widely regarded as a plus for the price of its shares. Why exit AMZN stock, the reasoning goes among its institutional sponsors, if we’ll all eventually be buying nearly everything we need from Amazon and its vendor partners?  But try picturing Americans in the throes of recession-or-worse, unable to summon the old shop-till-you-drop zeal that has powered the incredible growth of online retail.

At that point Amazon will be viewed less as a world-beating seller of all things than as a greedy monopolist using its dominance in retail to gouge customers and reap unconscionable profits. Try as they will to spin themselves as a tireless champion of the consumer, the Seattle-based giant might not have enough competitors by then for that narrative to seem credible. And that’s when their troubles will start. The news media will feed us a steady stream of consumer horror stories that will turn otherwise docile shoppers into a lynch mob. Will the company ultimately be held responsible for providing life’s necessities at ‘reasonable’ prices?  Quite possibly, yes. And that’s why it’s not farfetched to imagine a political movement seeking to regulate Amazon as we do companies that provide electricity and water. If Amazon can barely turn a profit now, imagine what a struggle it’ll be to boost margins when they’re flanked by Big Government and a pitchfork mob.