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Facebook’s stock market debut finally came and went — but for all the breathless hype, shares ended right near their offering price.

On Thursday night, Facebook () set its final IPO price at $38 a share. When the stock began trading at 11:30 a.m. ET on Friday, the first trade came in at $42.05 per share — a gain of nearly 11%.

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But the stock quickly reversed course, dropping down to hover right around the $38 IPO price for much of midday trading. Though shares rose modestly for short bursts of time throughout the day, they ended the session at $38.23.

While the price itself didn’t move much, trading was fast and intense. More than 80 million shares changed hands in the first 30 seconds of trading. By the end of the day, volume had spiked to around 567 million shares.

That easily set a new volume record for IPOs, smashing the previous record that automaker General Motors (, Fortune 500) set in 2010 with trading of around 450 million shares.

Facebook’s trading had been expected to start around 11 a.m. ET, but the opening was delayed.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg rang the Nasdaq opening bell remotely, from the company’s headquarters in California. Facebook celebrated its public debut by gathering its staff Thursday night for an all-night hackathon.

At the $38 IPO price, Facebook is on track to raise $16 billion — making it the largest tech IPO in history. It’s the third largest U.S. IPO ever, trailing only the $19.7 billion raised by Visa (, Fortune 500) in March 2008 and the $18.1 billion raised by automaker GM in November 2010, according to rankings by Thomson Reuters.

Underwriters have the option to purchase an extra 63.2 million shares to cover any so-called over-allotments for excess demand. If that happens, Facebook will sell 484.4 million shares in total. That would bring the amount raised to $18.4 billion.

How much Facebook is worth: At $38 per share, Facebook’s market capitalization would be around $81 billion on IPO day.

Many Facebook employees and executives hold unexercised stock options. If all of those shares were exercised, Facebook’s outstanding share count would rise to around 2.8 billion — pushing the company’s total valuation closer to $107 billion.

Among all global companies, Facebook has the third-highest IPO-day valuation in history, according to data from DealLogic.

SecondMarket, an exchange on which people can buy and sell stock in private companies, posted data on Friday about Facebook’s private-trading history.

It wasn’t until 2010 that SecondMarket’s Facebook trades racked up significant volume, so Facebook’s trades before that tended to be one-off deals at a low per-share price. In April 2010, Facebook fetched an average price of $9.82 per share on a monthly average basis. One year later, the rate jumped to $31.46.

As of April 5, Facebook shares were trading for an average of $42.72 each — nearly $4 higher than the IPO price.

Who’s selling shares: Zuckerberg plans to sell 30.2 million shares in the IPO offering. That will net Zuckerberg about $1.1 billion.

But Zuckerberg won’t be hanging on to his cash. Facebook said he will use the "substantial majority" of the windfall to cover the massive tax bill he’ll be hit with, thanks to his plan to exercise a large stock-options grant that will increase his ownership stake in the company he founded.

After the offering, Zuckerberg will still hold 503.6 million shares, or about 31% of the company. That stake is worth $19.1 billion at the IPO price.

Venture capital firm Accel Partners, which is the largest shareholder outside of Zuckerberg, is selling 49 million shares in the offering. That’s about a quarter of its Facebook holdings.

– CNNMoney’s Chris Isidore and Maureen Farrell contributed reporting. 

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Oil dropped below $100 per barrel for the first time since February following a disappointing U.S. jobs report and warnings of a weakening world economy.

Benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude fell as low as $99.90 Friday before edging back to $100.21 per barrel in New York. Crude prices are down 2.3 percent for the day.

Oil prices have been falling since Wednesday as analysts and traders increasingly focus on the economy. The Labor Department said Friday that the economy added just 115,000 jobs in April _ far fewer than the pace of hiring earlier this year. Government data shows that U.S. oil consumption dropped 5.3 percent in the first quarter, and supplies have been growing for the past six weeks and hit a 22-year high in Cushing, Okla., where benchmark crude is delivered.

The European economy also is slowing down as eurozone governments continue to struggle with a mountain of debt.

“We’re fearful that the economy is slowing more than we originally thought,” PFGBest analyst Phil Flynn said.

Oil has crossed the $100 mark 21 times during the past year. It rose as high as $113.93 per barrel last April and fell as low as $75.67 per barrel on Oct. 4.

As demand falls in the West, OPEC has been delivering more oil to world markets in an effort to force prices even lower Online payday loans. And Western nations are planning talks with Iran over its nuclear program, easing fears of a protracted standoff in the Middle East. Concerns about Iran, which is believed to be building a weapon, helped push benchmark oil to its peak near $110 per barrel earlier this year.

The recent drop in oil has helped make retail gasoline cheaper in the U.S. Pump prices have declined by an average of 13 cents per gallon since peaking this year at $3.936 on April 6. The national average hit $3.802 per gallon on Friday, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service.

OPIS chief oil analyst Tom Kloza said gas prices will head lower for the rest of the year. Kloza expects the national average to drop as low as $3.50 per gallon before the Fourth of July.

In other futures trading, heating oil lost 5.12 cents to $3.0357 per gallon, wholesale gasoline lost 4.55 cents to $3.0045 per gallon, and natural gas lost 4.6 cents to $2.294 per 1,000 cubic feet. Brent crude, which is used to set the price of oil imported into the U.S., lost $1.98 to $114.10 per barrel.

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Swedish truck maker AB Volvo said Thursday that higher costs contributed to a 2 percent drop in profits in the first quarter even though a buoyant performance in North America helped it record its strongest-ever sales for the period.

The sales performance impressed investors and the company’s share price spiked 5 percent to 94.10 kronor ($13.97) in early market trading on the Stockholm stock exchange.

The Goteborg-headquartered group recorded a net profit of 4.01 billion kronor ($595 million) for the first three months of the year, down slightly from the 4.08 billion kronor earned in the same period a year earlier. Costs, and especially those linked to research and development, dragged the bottom-line figure down compared with last year.

However, revenues jumped 10 percent to 78.84 billion kronor however _ the highest Volvo has ever recorded during a first quarter. They were boosted primarily by sales in the company’s key truck unit in North America. The trend in Europe stayed more or less unchanged from the previous year after a fall in demand in the fourth quarter, it said.

CEO Olof Persson said his company “showed its strength in being a global operation, when setbacks in some of our important markets were offset by positive developments in other markets.”

He also said that Volvo will keep investing in growth markets “by developing new products and further strengthening the sales and service networks.”

Volvo appeared a bit more optimistic about the European outlook as it revealed plans to ramp up production and raised its forecast for the heavy-duty truck market. It now expects an order intake of 230,000 trucks in 2012.

The forecast for North America remained unchanged, while production will be reduced in South America in May and June as the market switches over, and adapts to stricter emission requirements.

“We anticipate the demand will rise again in the second half of the year,” Persson said, noting the full-year forecast for Brazil therefore remains unchanged.

The outlook for Japan was also kept unchanged.

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European Central Bank officials led by President Mario Draghi resisted calls from the International Monetary Fund and U.S. Treasury to do more to stem the debt crisis roiling the euro-area economy.

As talks of global finance chiefs ended yesterday in Washington, euro-area central bankers from Draghi to Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann argued they have done enough by cutting interest rates and issuing more long-term bank loans.

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Hosni Mubarak’s former vice president said he decided to run for president to prevent Islamists from turning Egypt into a “religious state.”

Omar Suleiman, who was also Mubarak’s long-serving intelligence chief, said in an interview published Thursday that the Muslim Brotherhood’s fielding of a presidential candidate”horrified” Egyptians. The Islamic fundamentalist Brotherhood, which has emerged as Egypt’s most powerful political bloc after last year’s uprising, reversed an earlier decision not to field a candidate.

Suleiman told the weekly El-Fagr that the Brotherhood would control all state institutions if it wins the presidency and warned Egypt would be isolated internationally if that happened. The Brotherhood already controls just under half of parliament’s seats and is the single largest bloc. Together with other Islamists, they have a 70 percent majority in the chamber.

“It is my belief that those who demand that I run, like a majority of this nation’s citizens, are in a predicament and indeed the whole state is in a predicament, especially after the Brotherhood decided to field one of its leaders for the presidency after it pledged not to,” Suleiman, 75, said in the interview.

“That change struck horror in the souls of members of the Egyptians society. If the Brotherhood’s candidate wins the presidential election, Egypt will be turned into a religious state. All state institutions will be controlled by the Brotherhood.”

Suleiman’s comments came as the Islamist-dominated parliament debated a draft bill to strip top figures from the Mubarak regime of their political rights, including voting and running for office, for 10 years. If adopted, the law would disqualify Suleiman from running in the May 23-24 presidential election along with another candidate, Ahmed Shafiq, who was Mubarak’s last prime minister.

During Mubarak’s three-decade secular presidency, the Muslim Brotherhood was repressed with thousands of its members jailed payday loan companies.

Government representatives told the legislature on Thursday that the draft law violated the constitution, with the Justice Minister Mohammed Attiyah saying that no one should be stripped of their political rights without a court order.

Lawmakers countered that the nation remains in a “revolutionary state” that empowers the legislature to make such a law.

Others warned that a Suleiman presidency would mean the imprisonment of lawmakers and what one lawmaker described as the return of Israel’s influence in Egypt. Suleiman was a frequent visitor to Israel while Egypt maintained the Arab world’s first and longest standing peace treaty with the Jewish state.

“We are in a state of self-defense, we are defending Egypt and ourselves,” said independent Islamist lawmaker Mahmoud Khodeiri, one of the country’s top legal experts. “Omar Suleiman means Mubarak returns to the palace, and we all go to prison, and these are the lucky ones because others will be sent to the gallows.”

Mubarak is on trial for his life, charged with complicity in the killing of protesters in the uprising that toppled his regime. He was arrested in April last year, but has since been detained in hospital.

Other presidential candidates are also facing legal challenges, including the Brotherhood’s Khairat el-Shater. Some have challenged el-Shater’s candidacy on the grounds he served time in prison in connection to his political activity under Mubarak. He was pardoned by the military generals who succeeded Mubarak, but his detractors argue that more time must pass before he can run, according to the law.

The election of a president is the last stage of Egypt’s turbulent transition to democratic rule. The ruling generals who took over from Mubarak have promised to step down by July 1.

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A Japanese utility sought government approval Monday to restart two nuclear reactors even though some key upgrades to prevent another nuclear crisis will take three years.

All but one of Japan’s 54 reactors are offline for regular safety checks, and the last will be shut down in May. Residents fear another disaster like the Fukushima crisis, but Japan faces a severe power shortage if reactors are not restarted.

The government issued new safety guidelines to address residents’ worries, but it gave no deadline for when the improvements must be finished. Utility officials say the full upgrades will take three years.

Kansai Electric Power Co. submitted its safety plans for two reactors in Fukui prefecture, and the government’s final decision on whether to restart the reactors is reportedly expected later this week.

“We’ll aim to achieve the world’s top-class safety at our plants,” said Kansai Electric President Makoto Yagi as he handed the safety improvement roadmap to Economy and Industry Minister Yukio Edano.

However, more than one third of the necessary upgrades on the list are still incomplete, utility officials said.

Filtered vents that could substantially reduce radiation leaks in case of an accident threatening an explosion, a radiation-free crisis management building, and fences to block debris washed up by a tsunami won’t be ready until 2015 faxless pay day loans. This means the plant, as well as plant workers and residents won’t be fully protected from radiation leaks if a Fukushima-class accident occurs while the measures are being taken.

Currently, the crisis management headquarters at the Ohi plant is in the basement. The plant is relocating the function to a room next to the control room for the two reactors. None of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors are equipped with filtered vents, although their operators are moving to install them in coming years.

“The operators are expected to take initiative to improve safety and reliability, and never dwell on the safety myth,” Edano told Yagi, urging the utility to expedite the process.

The startup guidelines are based on recommendations adopted last month by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. The most crucial measures to secure cooling functions and prevent meltdowns as in Fukushima were incorporated in the government’s guidelines, but the rest were not.

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FRANKFURT, Germany _ Europe is searching for something to get growth going again and pull the eurozone’s heavily indebted countries out of their troubles _ but with little luck.

Unemployment and manufacturing indicators suggest the 17 countries that use the euro are headed for an official recession. Adding to these worrying signs is the realization that many of the traditional tools to give growth a shove _ government spending, tax cuts and lower central bank interest rates _ are off the table.

The absence of growth will be a big concern for European Central Bank President Mario Draghi and the bank’s governing council when they meet Wednesday to decide the eurozone’s benchmark refinancing rate. No change in the rate _ which is at a record low of 1 percent _ is expected this time around.

A recent round of economic indicators will be prominent in the governing council’s minds when it meets. On Monday, the Markit index of industrial activity for the eurozone strongly suggested that the region’s economy is still contracting after shrinking 0.3 percent in the last three months of 2011. Two straight quarters of falling output are a common definition of recession. Meanwhile, unemployment across the 17-country group crept up to a record 10.8 percent, official figures also released on Monday showed. And national jobless rates paint an even more disturbing picture _ especially among the countries hit worst by the debt crisis: Spain at 23.6 percent unemployed, Greece 21.0 percent, Ireland 14.7 percent.

The European Union’s executive commission estimates that the eurozone economy will shrink by 0.3 percent this year, while Greece faces shrinkage of 4.4 percent in the fifth year of a deep recession. Italy faces 1.3 drop in output according to commission forecasts while Spain will fall 1.0 percent.

Short-term answers are scarce. The debt crisis hitting the eurozone means governments can no longer spend their way out of a downturn_ in fact, they are doing the opposite and embarking on rounds of austerity cuts.

On top of this, the ECB is restrained from cutting interest rates by the eurozone’s stubbornly high inflation rate, which has been pushed up oil prices and some taxes to 2.6 percent. The ECB is concentrating on getting price increases down to under 2 percent and lowering interest rates would push inflation up.

The region could even face the prospect of so-called “stagflation” _ a period of no or very little economic growth accompanied by inflation _ according to Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING.

“The fact that the recovery of the eurozone economy would be slow and bumpy was already clear,” Brzeski wrote in a note to investors.

“Now, high energy prices have even increased the risk of stagflation in the eurozone, a worst-case scenario which should cause concern at the Eurotower in coming months” _ a reference to the ECB’s Frankfurt skyscraper headquarters payday loans.

Brzeski adds that the stubborn inflation rate meant that “further rate cuts should be off the table”.

Another weapon in the ECB’s arsenal has also put beyond use. The (EURO)1 trillion program of “all-you-can-eat” loans to banks in December and February did manage to take some heat off the debt crisis that was crippling governments including Spain and Italy. Some banks used the cheap money flooding the markets to snap up government debt. The program has helped lower costs at which governments borrow on the financial markets and stopped the recession from becoming much deeper.

But the ECB loans are seen as a stopgap at best. The bank is currently in a holding pattern before it can start further, similar, measures as it waits to see whether that money finds its way through to loans to businesses and the wider economy.

The problem remains: Countries that don’t slash spending risk being unable to borrow money from bond investors because the borrowing costs set by those investors _ the so-called yields _ are too high. Once they are of cut off from the bond market by prohibitively high yields, a bailout is the only alternative to default. Greece, Ireland and Portugal have already been forced to seek help from the other eurozone member countries and the International Monetary Fund.

Spanish and Italian yields were hitting the dangerously high levels around 7 percent late last year before the ECB stepped in with its cheap loans. The countries’ yields dropped to more manageable levels, but are beginning to creep up again. Spanish 10-year bond yields have edged up to 5.42 percent on Tuesday, from under 5 percent a month ago. Italy’s 10-year bonds yielded 5.15 percent, also up from under 5 percent last month.

The solution to the debt crisis, eurozone officials, the ECB and economists all say, is structural reforms to make indebted countries more business-friendly by slashing regulation and eliminating costly restrictive labour practices.

As the economy gets bigger, the relative size of the debt pile shrinks, and higher tax revenues and stronger finances reassure bond investors _ so they will loan money at affordable rates.

But those changes to labor markets take time to win approval in parliaments _ often against resistance from labor and business special interests. Then they may years to show results in terms of higher growth.

“The kind of structural reforms that we are talking about will take five, six, seven years to really have a full impact,” said Guntram Wolff, deputy director of the Bruegel research institute in Brussels.

For short-term growth, aside from the ECB loans, “we really don’t have a story there,” Wolff warns.

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