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The Week in Business: Slowing Job Growth

    After many consecutive months in which jobs reports showed strong gains, new jobs data on Friday appeared to buck the trend. The economy added 223,000 jobs last month, down slightly from November’s total of 263,000, which was similar to September and October’s numbers. The gradual slowdown is good news for Federal Reserve officials, who have long waited for a sign that their efforts to cool the economy are having an effect on the labor market as they fight rapid price increases. But 223,000 is still a comfortable growth rate and the central bank has a much lower target of 100,000 jobs per month.

    Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced cryptocurrency executive, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to the many crimes he faces charges: wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, and money laundering, to name a few. Mr. Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange whose collapse resulted in billions of dollars in customer losses, was arrested last month in the Bahamas, where his company was until recently located. He was later extradited to the United States, released on $250 million bail, and ordered to remain under house arrest with his parents in Palo Alto, California. Mr. Bankman-Fried was able to reverse course and plead guilty to at least some of the charges. but right now he faces a tentative trial date of Oct. 2.

    Meta, which was already struggling with its view of the metaverse, a plummeting stock price and massive layoffs, ran into another obstacle for its company last week when regulators in the European Union found the company was illegally forcing users to effectively accept targeted ads. Because language asking users for their legal permission to use their personal data appears in Meta’s terms of service agreement — and because users must accept Meta’s terms of service agreement to use its social media services — regulators said the practice amounted to a violation of a groundbreaking data privacy law that took effect in 2018 and restricts companies’ ability to collect information about users without their consent. The decision comes with a fine of 390 million euros, or $414 million, and also requires Meta to outline in the next three months how it will begin to comply with the 2018 law. In a statement, Meta said there was a “lack of regulatory clarity” was about advertising practices in the European Union.

    Tesla stock is in free fall. Fourth quarter sales fell short of analysts’ expectations (who had already lowered their forecasts). It has lost more than $850 billion in market value since its peak in November 2020. And Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, seems much more focused on Twitter than the electric vehicle maker he’s led since 2008 — or that is. at least what many investors are beginning to fear. Mr. Musk has tried to placate Tesla employees by warning them not to fixate on stock prices and repeating bold claims that Tesla would become the most valuable company in the world. But it’s likely that analysts will continue to lower their forecasts for the automaker, which also faces increasingly fierce competition in the United States and abroad. For example, Tesla’s sales in China were 20 percent lower last month than a year earlier. The decline comes as Chinese automakers such as BYD become more formidable in the electric vehicle market.