Editor:

We were told that the purpose of the bailout of banks and Wall Street financial service firms was to free up credit so that business firms could borrow the funds to keep operating. Now we find out from MSNBC and the Washington Post that the banks intend to use half of their $163 billion of taxpayer bailout money to pay dividends to their shareholders.

It used to be that under our system of free enterprise capitalism, people who speculated in corporate stocks took a risk. Maybe the corporation would pay a dividend, maybe not. If investors were unwilling to accept such a risk, they would choose not to speculate in the stock market.

Under the new type of corporate capitalism we have today, however, it appears that the speculator takes the benefit if things go well, but the taxpayer pays the cost if things go bad.

This is unacceptable, and we the taxpayers should demand that Congress and the U.S. Department of the Treasury prohibit any bank or other financial services corporation paying dividends from receiving any of the bailout money.

If banks have enough money to pay dividends, they have enough money to continue to operate, and they don’t need the taxpayer bailout.

Fairhope resident