NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — General Motors will not advertise during this year’s Super Bowl game, the automaker said Friday.

It’s a big change for GM which had returned to Super Bowl advertising after sitting out 2009 and 2010 as the automaker recovered from economic disaster and bankruptcy. GM executives have said that ads during the game were very effective.

Advertisers paid an average of $3.5 million for a 30-second ad during last year’s Super Bowl, which was broadcast by NBC. Next year’s game will be broadcast by CBS.

“We understand the reach the Super Bowl provides, but with the increased price, we can’t justify the expense,” GM spokesman Pat Morrissey said.

NEW YORK (AP) — It was barely a “like” and definitely not a “love” from Facebook investors as the online social network’s stock failed to live up to the hype in its trading debut Friday.

One of the most anticipated IPOs in Wall Street history ended on a flat note, with Facebook’s stock closing at $38.23, up 23 cents from Thursday night’s pricing.

That meant the company founded in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room has a market value of about $105 billion, more than Amazon.com, McDonald’s and Silicon Valley icons Hewlett-Packard and Cisco.

It also gave 28-year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg a stake worth $19,252,698,725.50.

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) — The next deadline facing Congress to save the U.S. Postal Service is Aug. 1. That’s when the agency won’t have enough money to make a $5.5 billion payment to a retirement fund mandated by law.

No one’s quite sure what happens if Aug. 1 rolls around and the Postal Service has to use all its cash on the fund to prepay healthcare benefits for retirees. But when a similar deadline loomed last year (and was pushed back by Congress), Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe predicted doom.

The last big deadline was a Postal Service moratorium on postal closures, which expired on May 15.

The United States Commerce Department announced on Thursday the imposition of anti-dumping tariffs of more than 31 percent on solar panels from China, a decision certain to infuriate Chinese officials already upset after recent bilateral frictions over China’s human rights policies and its increasingly confrontational approach towards American allies like the Philippines and Japan.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — After nearly five years managing her family’s finances, Holly McCall, a 34-year old stay-at-home mother of two from Vienna, Va., never thought she would have trouble getting a credit card.

She makes the majority of family purchases, has an excellent credit score and has been approved for several cards in the past. But when McCall applied for a Target card last fall, she was denied.

She blames that denial on a recent Card Act rule.

The law was passed in 2009 to protect consumers from unfair and deceptive credit card practices. But some stay-at-home parents argue that a Card Act rule that took effect last October has made it harder for them to get approved for credit cards.

(AP) NEW YORK – The price of oil dropped to a six-month low Tuesday on renewed concern that Greece would be forced to leave the European common currency and trigger shockwaves across Europe.

Benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude gave up 80 cents to end the day at $93.98 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil hasn’t finished this low since Dec. 19.

In central Texas, where catastrophic drought has turned green pastures brown and pushed some cattlemen to the brink of ruin, rancher Don Casey was forced to sell half his herd.

Yet Casey does not sound too stressed.

“I’m making less because I’ve got half as many cows. But I’m also 69 years old. And with less cows to worry about, we’re packing the pickup and we’re headed down to the Texas coast for 10 days and I’m fishing,” Casey said. “And those cows can go take care of themselves.”

Casey’s attitude is typical of cattle ranchers, a resilient breed of farmers accustomed to hard times.

EW YORK (CNNMoney) — Carroll Shelby, most famous for creating high-performance road and racing cars bearing his name, died Thursday in Dallas, Texas. He was 89 years old.

Shelby’s name is probably most associated with the Cobra, a car that combined a lightweight British racecar body with a powerful Ford V8 engine. He is also known for the Shelby line of Ford Mustang-based performance cars.

The cause of his death has not been released, according to a statement from the auto company Shelby American.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc, faced with allegations that its Mexican unit paid $24 million in bribes to accelerate its expansion, could be forced to hire an independent monitor to ensure future compliance with U.S. anti-corruption laws.

Since 2009, the Obama administration has demanded in one-third of its corporate bribery cases that companies hire independent monitors, despite the added costs and intrusion into the companies’ operations.

U.S. engineering company KBR Inc, German luxury automaker Daimler AG and British defense contractor BAE Systems all were required to hire independent monitors.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — It may be dangerous, difficult work, but oil drillers are well compensated for the job: In 2011 the average salary for rig workers and other industry personnel was $99,175.

That number includes fat paychecks for the highly skilled, like $235,586 for a “drilling consultant” and $139,868 for a “reservoir engineer”, according to Rigzone, an industry information provider that compiled the figures.

But even for someone with less than a year’s experience the average wage was $66,923.

Ronald McDonald: wellness instructor? The hamburger pitchman recently showed up at the Union Terrace Elementary School in Allentown, Pa., to teach kids about the benefits of healthy eating and exercise.

Yes, that’s right. The Big Mac mascot is delivering a health pitch on the trail of evidence that suggests American kids are getting fatter by the day, and that schools are the natural frontline in the battle against obesity.

The school welcomed the red-haired clown because, in a time of program cutbacks and tight budgets, Ronald McDonald came with a $1,000 check, whose memo line reads: “nutrition program.”

LOS ANGELES — AMC Entertainment, which owns the second-largest movie theater chain in North America, is in talks to sell the company or a significant stake in it to the Wanda Group, one of China’s largest theater owners, according to people briefed on the discussions.

If completed, the deal will begin a new phase in China’s push into the
global film industry by sharply increasing its leverage with Hollywood
and creating the first theater chain to have a commanding presence in
the world’s two largest movie markets.