Herding Cats: Our Favorite Finance News for the Week of March 14th

March Mustache Madness has begun! Oh, and regular March Madness too. It's hard to care this year since my alma mater voluntarily banned itself from the tournament (because former player OJ Mayo and former head Coach Tim Floyd were idiots two years ago), but I suppose I'll try my best to enjoy the action.

MainStreet: The March Madness Productivity Price Tag - By checking my bracket at work, I've become part of the $1.8 billion productivity suck that will plague our great nation the rest of this month. Okay, that number might be a bunch of @#$%, but it's still got to be up there in the tens or hundreds of millions. Best of luck to all of you on your brackets, especially if you make your picks like I do: based solely on your affection for the college itself, its city, or its general geographical area (I had the Minnesota Golden Gophers in the Final Four... dammit!). Yes, I acknowledge the fact that I will probably come in dead last in the Savings office pool because of said strategy.

WalletPop: Vintage Collectibles That Aren't As Valuable As You Might Think - Does this mean the commemorative Barack Obama Presidential Inauguration plate set that I bought after seeing it for $19.99 on a TV commercial at 2:15am isn't going to pay for my first child's college tuition??? Just kidding, I'd never buy something that stupid, because I already know that my mint-condition Chia Obama will fetch thousands of Google Dollars in 2045 (after Google completes its $2.3 quadrillion merger with the United States government in 2039). Come to think of it... any copy of any newspaper might be worth millions of Google Dollars by then (*rimshot*). Because newspaper is already a dead medium, you see. You guys have been great, I'll be here all week!

WiseBread: Cheapest Ways To Get Your Caffeine Fix - Despite being legitimately nocturnal for several portions of college, I managed to avoid long-term stimulant dependence, but nowadays I'm a diurnal zombie if I try to ignore my caffeine addiction. Since I hate coffee, I start my morning with a 200mg "Stay Awake" pill (generic No Doz from the grocery store), and drink Diet Coke all day (usually over a liter) to keep my buzz up. Unhealthy? Extremely...but hey, at least I'm not freebasing the stuff... yet. Just kidding, again.

Consumerist: Madoff Gets S*** Kicked Out Of Him In Prison - Speaking of freebasing, I bet it's something Bernie Madoff is learning a lot about from his new pals inside the Butner Medium Security Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina. I think we can all agree that America owes a debt of gratitude to the heroic gentleman who gave Bernie a stern talking-to, with his fists, last December. Somebody's getting a thank-you pallet of cigarette cartons in the mail!

The Big Money: Years Later, Facebook Will Pay Man For Ruining His Christmas - Facebook has become a world-wide leader in privacy violations (over 300 million served!), but I think you deserve some kind of karmic retribution if you buy your girlfriend a generic engagement ring on freaking Overstock. Does UPS bring it to your door in an armored truck or something? Anyways, everything turned out okay, because the dude gets $10,000 of the settlement, possibly to buy his fiancee a bonus engagement ring, complete with un-ruined surprise. Yay!

Okay, back to my bracket. As of right now I'm 13 for 14 in my East and South picks, but like any person with a soul, I still hope Arkansas Pine Bluff upsets Duke by 50 points and taints my near-perfection.

We can dream, can't we, America?