MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (WMOT) -- Here’s just one indication that Tennessee’s recession hasn’t been as deep or as damaging as what other southern states have experienced.
Neighboring states have suffered a significant number of bank failures in recent months, while Tennessee hasn’t had a bank close in nearly a decade.
Georgia has had 27 banks fail so far this year. Alabama and North Carolina had two bank closings each in 2011. Mississippi and Arkansas have both closed a single bank in recent months. A Kentucky bank failed last year.
Tim Amos, a Senior Vice President at the Tennessee Banker’s Association, says Tennessee’s economy didn’t overheat as badly as other states pre-recession and so didn’t fall quite as far during the recession.
“We didn’t have the same kind of expansive real-estate development that, for example, Georgia had where bank failures are tied directly to expansive growth, Amos says."
Figures provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation show that the agency is closing an average of about 8 banks each month. Compare that to 2007 when the FDIC seized control of just three banks nationwide.
The last bank to go under in Tennessee came in 2002 when regulators closed the Bank of Alamo in Alamo, Tennessee, located northwest of Jackson.