Would the real Malcolm Berko please stand up?

What stock exchange firm do you work for? Is it true that you accumulate a big holding of a stock for all of your clients and then write good things about that stock in your newspaper column so that millions of investors will read about the stock? And when all these people who read about the stock think it’s good, they buy the stock and push it up to a much higher price than what your clients paid, and then you sell it at a profit, don’t you?

Is this how you pay for your big, plush office and big staff? Your huge, multi-million-dollar home and your fancy golf club? Your expensive Mercedes and vacations in Europe?

I think this is terrible and illegal and that you should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law by the New York Stock Exchange and the Securities Exchange Commission people.

I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but it certainly ain’t the Internal Revenue Service, my barber, my accountant or Kenny Hee, who owns the second best Chinese restaurant in Central Florida. But it’s always a hoot to hear from a reader like you. Even though your questions derive from an enormous superfluity of ignorance and anger, they are fair questions and rightly deserve to be answered.

My 15-by-20-foot office, where I employ 1.5 people, is scrunched between a beauty salon and a travel bureau. It’s located in an older, declining, 31-year-old business center that’s also home to a podiatrist, a chiropractor, a physical therapy center and a Fifth Third branch bank. My office is furnished with second- and third-hand furniture, two IBM wheel-writer typewriters, a couple of computers and an air conditioning unit that’s as old as the original wallpapering and carpets.

I live in a modest house, in a modest neighborhood, in a modest community, and I drive a diesel and an SUV, both of which are American-made. I’m not employed by a brokerage; I don’t play golf, and I’ve not been to Europe in a decade.

I write three columns for weekly publication, and if you objectively read them, common sense will tell you that the brokerage industry and I agree on only one thing: that stocks will go up and that stocks will go down. This column is anathema to the sales practices and products of the brokerage industry.

It’s so anathema, in fact, that on numerous occasions, Merrill Lynch and other brokerages have tried to silence the column through the NYSE, the National Association of Securities Dealers and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

A consultant is a guy with grey hair so he can appear distinguished and hemorrhoids so he can look concerned. And I’m a consultant for several large retirement plans, in which I help the company define and select short-, medium- and long-term investment objectives. Then I help that company to select a money manager or managers who we think may best represent the plan’s objectives. And finally, I monitor the money manager or managers to be sure they’re meeting the plan’s objectives. I do not tell them when to invest or what investments to buy, nor do I tell them where to place their trades.

And if a retiring or retired employee needs to employ a personal money manager, I may be asked to help that person locate a professional he can trust. I do not buy or sell stocks for anybody. I do not have any interest in any brokerage accounts (except family accounts), and I do not participate in any commission arrangements.

I write this column because it gives me enormous satisfaction to know that over the years, it has has helped millions of investors make appropriate decisions and that their lives are much better for it. And I am reminded of this by the emails and letters I receive from folks unlike you.

Book about caffeine will keep you awake

Trans fats are out. Smoking is definitely out. Is caffeine next? You may be convinced after reading Caffeine Makes Me Bleed (And How It Can Poison You, Too!) by Susan Lynn, a resident of Diamond in Portage County.

To Lynn, caffeine is the Dark Master. Most of the book is written as a memoir, beginning with her childhood in Lake Milton, where her autoworker father bought her chocolate candy and the whole family enjoyed cola drinks with their meals.

After Lynn's marriage, she studied to be a nurse, but was badly injured in a car accident in which her classmate, who was driving, was killed. This ended nursing school for her, and was the beginning of chronic health problems.

Lynn found a job as an executive assistant in the highly competitive and highly caffeinated field of commercial construction. This is the best portion of the book, as Lynn describes her high-stress work, including satisfying the boss's persnickety wife, who designed a template for Lynn to cut the paper she was to use to wrap hundreds of Christmas hams for employee gifts — which she then had to alphabetize by recipient.

Lynn's job grows increasingly stressful even before she gives birth to a premature son, and then her boss makes her the firm's director of safety, a huge responsibility, without decreasing any of her other duties. She began using her cola drinks to wash down antacids, and begins seeing blood in the bathroom; a doctor assures her it's just hemorrhoids.

After her personal story comes to an end, the book turns into an insistent diatribe, which carries on well after she has made her point. Lynn's book may not persuade you to give up caffeine, but she does tell her story well.

As ''carpe diem'' means ''seize the day,'' ''carpe viam'' means ''seize the road,'' and that is what the characters in Michael J. Keyser's novel Carpe Viam: A Time to Live do. In this late-1960s-set story of a skirt-chasing businessman, Jim Hastings comes to work for a California aluminum company and soon begins an affair with his boss's wife (they have an open marriage, but don't reveal the identities of their lovers).

When Jim is assigned to a Northern California territory and settles in San Francisco, his lady friend and her husband recommit to monogamy, and Jim meets Rhonda, a paralegal who later becomes the company's lawyer and Jim's wife. Jim and Rhonda seize the road before them with travel, children and careers.

Keyser's preface notes that his novel ''contains no blasphemy,'' but that doesn't mean it's not risque: There's a lot of talk about sex — and about aluminum, Keyser's former business.