Audio clip
Glenn Barker
DUNLAP, Tenn. — Glenn Barker works at the same bank he helped found in Dunlap more than 35 years ago. Over the years, he’s seen the economy in the Sequatchie Valley wax and wane.
Mr. Barker believes the Sequatchie Valley’s isolation helps keep national economic trends at bay and that community banks in local economies still thrive, independent of most national swings in fortune.
Rural communities and their financial institutions weather the economy’s twists and turns together because they depend on each other, he said.
Q: How is the national economy reflected locally?
A: I’ve looked at the situation. I read The Wall Street Journal every day. I read the other day that the credit markets have dried up. Our credit markets haven’t dried up. We had a loan committee (meeting) last night, and we did 67 loans at $4.6 million, nearly $4.7 million. If I believe anything, it’s the fact that our credit markets haven’t dried up locally, as far as community banks are concerned.
The big banks don’t have the liquidity we’ve got, but we’ve still got plenty of money to lend, and we still have some loan demand.
I don’t believe in my memory I’ve seen as much divide between Wall Street and community banks as we see today. (Wall Street institutions) are apparently in a depression right now, and we’ve got jobs. As long as we’ve got jobs and businesses and manufacturers around, we’re in good shape.
Q: How do community banks react to national trends?
A: We look at local trends and (for) when our local trends start down. (Nationally) I think the economy was really not sustainable where we were. I think we had to have some pullback because when home prices started to increase 10 (percent) to 15 percent a year, you can’t sustain that over long terms.
Q: What’s happening in the local housing market?
A: It’s slowed down a little bit but we still have demand. I haven’t seen anything on price levels dropping, but I’ve seen demand dropping some, and loans have slowed up a little bit.
Q: What kind of people are in the market for a home now?
A: Local people, people who want a home and are starting a family. They’re not really changing their plans. They’re slowing down a little bit and, of course, gas is taking some of their budgets. I think that’s what’s hurting them. If the gas price was $2.50 instead of $3.25 ... I don’t think we’d see as much slowdown.
Q: Where will the local banking industry and the economy be in another 12 months?
A: I think you’ll see things keep slowing down a little bit. There’ll be some bad loans pop up that probably wouldn’t have popped up. The banks that are well-positioned are going to be OK, and the ones that are not may suffer some.
I was in a meeting in Florida a couple of weeks ago, and they said there were 78 troubled banks, or problem banks, in the United States on the FDIC list. They thought there’d be 10 times that by the end of the year. That’s 780. That’s quite a difference, but still you’ve got 7,000 or 8,000 banks, so it’s still not that big a deal.
We just got through our board meeting last night. We’ve started off the year with the best two months we’ve had in two or three years, so that’s really a positive for us. We’re a little more cautious, but we’re not going to dry up our credit.
Q: Are you hearing the same thing from institutions similar to you?
A: Most community banks I’ve talked to — and I just got through a (Tennessee Bankers Association) board meeting last week and talked to banks across the state — they’re not seeing a lot of problems with any banks yet.
It really irritates me to tie community banks in with big national banks. We know our customers. If they’ve got a problem, they come in and sit down with us. When you get on the national market, you get some broker selling a loan to somebody in New York and they sell it somebody in California or Florida, and nobody knows anybody.
Q: Do you think the local economy sustains itself because it’s so isolated?
A: I think so. If we get a layoff at ... one of our plants, then it affects us some, but it doesn’t affect us all that much. For the last three or four or five years people have been coming in from Florida and everywhere buying property; that may slow down some. But as I said, I don’t think that’s sustainable anyway. It had to slow down somewhere. As long as we loan money on the value of the property, we’re OK.
NEWMAKER
Name: Glenn Barker
Age: 73
Occupation: CEO and chairman of Citizens Tri-County Bank
Hometown: Dunlap, Tenn.
Ben Benton is a news reporter at the Chattanooga Times Free Press. He covers Southeast Tennessee and previously covered North Georgia education. Ben has worked at the Times Free Press since November 2005, first covering Bledsoe and Sequatchie counties and later adding Marion, Grundy and other counties in the northern and western edges of the region to his coverage. He was born and raised in Cleveland, Tenn., a graduate of Bradley Central High School. Benton ...
