Even as stocks tumble, nationwide unemployment rises and credit markets remain tight, Muskogee and Oklahoma bankers remain confident that their customers’ accounts will survive hard times.

“Nothing is safer than money in the bank,” Oklahoma Bankers Association President and Chief Executive Officer Roger M. Beverage said during a visit to the Muskogee Phoenix on Thursday.

He and other bankers are visiting cities across the state to spread that message.

Beverage supported what he called a rescue plan for America’s lending institutions and what others have called a federal financial bailout plan. The bill, which passed the U.S. Senate on Wednesday and the House on Friday, adds $100 billion in tax breaks for businesses and the middle class and raises the limit on federal deposit insurance to $250,000 from $100,000.

In Muskogee, Beverage was joined by Don Abernathy Jr., president and CEO of The Bankers Bank; Chris Condley, chief executive officer of First National Bank of Muskogee; Dewayne Briley, president of Iron Horse Investment Group, the holding company that owns Armstrong Bank, and Billy Taylor, president of Armstrong Bank.

Beverage opened a question-and-answer session:

ROGER BEVERAGE: “Banks in Oklahoma are at the strongest they’ve been in the state’s history and the reason the economy is doing well and banks are a reflection of the state’s economy.

“The FDIC was formed 75 years ago and banks have paid into that fund to provide against the possibility of bank failures. In that 75 years, no one has ever lost a dime in an FDIC-insured bank.”

QUESTION: Not even when Oklahoma had those bank failures of the 1980s, Penn Square Bank?

BEVERAGE: “If they lost money, it was because they had more than the insured amount in the bank.

QUESTION: “Why is Oklahoma in a better financial situation than the rest of the country?

BEVERAGE: Energy, primarily. A $100 barrel of oil can do a lot for an economy and when you have a lot of folks who have invested and are producing energy — gas and oil — and are doing exceptionally well and growing very significantly. That spreads to other areas of the economy. Energy production is probably the driving force ... and agriculture. We’re close to all-time highs in wheat and corn prices.

“Oklahoma is a little bit of an island by comparison to some states. House prices have appreciated a bit, but they didn’t appreciate anything like they have in some states. The housing crisis is largely confined to seven, maybe eight states. Florida, California, Arizona and Nevada are states where speculation was a driving force behind the tremendous expansion of housing, and it has created problems. The other three states — Michigan, Ohio and Indiana — are having problems because their local economies are not as strong as Oklahoma’s. Colorado is an eighth state that has a bit of a bubble-bursting problem.”