Axios

Bad weather along the Gulf Coast prevented fuel tankers from delivering jet fuel to Orlando International Airport, the airport said Sunday.

Why it matters: The airport's fuel reserves are lower than normal and could continue to decrease, potentially causing delays or flight disruptions over the next few days.

Wages rose swiftly in 2021 as employers from tech firms to coffee shops struggled to find workers.

• Now the labor market is cooling down, and so is wage growth, according to Indeed data.

By the numbers: Wages spiked fastest in essential, low-wage jobs in the service and care industries during the pandemic — peaking at 12.3% year-over-year growth at the beginning of 2022.

• As the world opens back up, wage growth in these sectors is falling fastest, notes Nick Bunker, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab.

The bottom line: Wage growth remains strong — and well above 2019 levels — but the rapid gains workers made during the pandemic are slowing.

• "As demand has faded and workers' interest has returned, the competition [among employers] has faded," says Bunker.

Along with implications for startup M&A, the Within suit may affect how other tech companies develop their products and businesses.

The big picture: As companies grow and want to add new product capabilities and business offerings, they often grapple with whether to "build or buy" their way in.

• Savvy companies have used acquisitions to obtain unique technologies and incorporate them into their own.
• For example, Snapchat's widely popular animated filters originated from its purchase of startup Looksery.
• Of course, Meta has used this strategy for years. It acquired FriendFeed in 2009 to bolster its real-time news feed capabilities and MSQRD in 2016 to compete with Snapchat's filters, just to name two.

To build or buy is exactly what Meta's VR team spent some time figuring out in the lead-up to its acquisition of Within — and now a point of contention in the court battle.

• A significant portion of the injunction debate will focus on whether Meta had the capabilities to build its own dedicated VR fitness app, and whether it seriously planned to until its hand was forced by rumors that Apple was courting Within.

The bottom line: If these types of acquisitions became much harder to pass by regulators, it may have a chilling effect on how tech products are built.

The Federal Trade Commission kicked off a court effort on Thursday to prevent Meta from acquiring Within, the maker of a virtual reality fitness app.

• However, the case is likely to have spillover effects beyond Facebook's embattled parent.

Why it matters: Setting any precedent that prevents large tech companies from acquiring startups is bound to send ripples through startup land, where selling to a bigger company is seen as a critical piece of what keeps the ecosystem going.

Passive investors, the giants of the investing world, have been facing fierce criticism from both sides of the debate over environmentally responsible investing. One of the biggest players has decided to throw in the towel.

Why it matters: One of the great successes of the past few years has been NZAM, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative. Its 291 signatories, representing $66 trillion of assets under management, have all signed on to a vision of a zero-carbon future.

• Now, however, one of the biggest members, Vanguard, has withdrawn from the group.

The big picture: Vanguard, more than any other investing giant, is proudly dedicated to passive investing — the idea that it's a better idea over the long haul to just buy an entire index than it is to try to pick and choose individual stocks to buy and sell.

• By their nature, passive investors can't divest from carbon-intensive companies. That's a big problem, for environmentalists who have been loudly campaigning against Vanguard's fossil-fuel investments.

The other side: Joining groups like NZAM carries connotations distasteful to many Republicans, who criticize the members of such groups as being beholden to "woke capitalism."

• Vanguard has been on the receiving end of relatively few of those complaints, but BlackRock, another mostly-passive asset manager, is regularly attacked by Republicans. On Thursday, Arizona said it withdrew $543 million from BlackRock money-market funds, for instance.

The bottom line: BlackRock CEO Larry Fink relishes the fight over environmental responsibility. Most other U.S. asset managers don't.

Barry Silbert achieved the impossible: He successfully invented a genuinely safe way of earning billions of dollars in crypto. And yet his firm, Digital Currency Group, is currently hunkered down, with a key unit on the brink of bankruptcy.

Why it matters: The crypto winter is laying bare the degree to which the "whales" in the space, including billionaires like Silbert, willingly took on ludicrous risks, even as they painted themselves in public as sober entrepreneurs who would embrace regulatory constraints.

The stonks are too damn high. One good thing that could happen for America over the coming weeks would be for the stock market to embark upon another significant decline.

Why it matters: A buoyant stock market is constraining the Fed and, ultimately, hurting the country. There's a financial media convention that higher = better, when it comes to the stock market — but that's not always the case.

Power Players is back in 2023. Nominate a Power Player in Charlotte, Chicago or Denver.

Axios Local's first annual Power Players list contains 200 individuals and organizations in 24 Axios Local cities spanning from Miami to Seattle, from Philadelphia to Phoenix, who've made a difference in their community in 2022.

• They made headlines, advanced major projects, or worked behind the scenes to shape their city.

Sam Bankman-Fried will testify before the House Committee on Financial Services next Tuesday as part of the panel's investigation into FTX's collapse.

Why it matters: Bankman-Fried has embarked on a wide-ranging media tour after the company filed for bankruptcy but hasn't testified under oath.