MidDays with Gerard Gibert 2026-07-24

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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Get ready to go beyond the headlines and join a meaningful conversation with people from around the state. You're listening to MidDays with Gerard Gibert here on SuperTalk Mississippi.

**Gerard Gibert** (1:01)
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to MidDays. SuperTalk Mississippi.
I'm your host, Gerard Gibert, along with Rhino in the Element Well studio, guiding you through the middle of your day with facts, fodder, and fine music on this. Right-o. Heck dang, yeah, man. We got a little rain at my house last night, little pop-up variety showers, kind of a humid atmosphere, but welcome rain. It's been a little dry the last... We went from the monsoon of June, and it quickly shifted, as is often the case in Mississippi, to drought-like conditions. I also must report that yesterday here in the studio, in the host part of the studio, it was like a blizzard in here. It's not as bad today. I don't know what happened. But are you okay in there? Okay, you're fine, because I know that it's warmer in there. We're on the same air conditioning system.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:01)
Yeah, but I've got the stack of computers blowing hot air out the fan.

**Gerard Gibert** (2:04)
Exactly. So we're all buckled up, ready to go. Kelly Bennett from the news department joins us at 1120, and then at 1205, Carolyn Green, the coroner of Lee County, Mississippi, is going to call in to talk to us about the Fentanyl Awareness Forum that she is conducting on August the 10th. It's something that, of course, as a coroner, Ms. Green deals with quite a bit. And so looking forward to those conversations, we got a lot of stuff to cover. The first thing is we're playing shoot them up there in the Middle East. The president says he is considering, and I'm quoting here, a massive attack on Iran that's, quote, bigger than ever before, adding that he had not yet reached a decision, but that Israel would join in two minutes if I asked them to.
Now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, traveling in the Philippines yesterday, said that the president is pursuing, quote, a head for an eye policy, adding that the regime will, quote, pay a very heavy price and is, quote, begging the US to make another deal. Now, the military has deployed significant assets into the Middle East, including fighter jets, a bunch of troops and support personnel, even a B-1 long-range bomber. You know, you're serious when those dudes show up in combat operations this week. I've also seen, Rhino, that a number of medical personnel have been deployed into Europe, I think Germany specifically.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:58)
Yeah, that's usually the, oh, what's the phrase? Cazavac?

**Gerard Gibert** (4:03)
Yeah, exactly, Cazavac.

**SPEAKER_4** (4:05)
That's usually the destination for major surgeries or amputations or something like that. So they get you out of the field, into the field hospital, and there may be another step between that and Germany, Germany's like the last resort place.

**Gerard Gibert** (4:24)
So hopefully this does not indicate that a ground invasion is imminent, because that's where you would need the medical personnel at that first response kind of staging facility in operation. But that is a concern, for sure. Meanwhile, you got the price of oil jumping again, and here we are about to flip the calendar into August, meaning not much time between now and the midterms, and no doubt, voters are going to be considering affordability. That seems to be the term used most frequently to describe the management of household finances. Gasoline had dropped below 4 bucks a gallon during the short ceasefire period, and the oil was flowing again.
But it looks like that it is going to be headed to north of $4 a gallon, again, because of the interruption in the flow of oil, and thus the supply of oil.

**SPEAKER_4** (5:43)
Futures are down, though.

**Gerard Gibert** (5:44)
They are down a little bit today, and I don't know. I can't find any explanation for it, other than maybe the feeling is among traders that the reaction was a little overblown yesterday.
But yeah, $89 a barrel, still too high for what we want to pay at the pump, for sure.

**SPEAKER_4** (6:04)
It went up $2 yesterday, and now it's back down about $2.

**Gerard Gibert** (6:08)
Exactly. So it gave up its gains. However, traders are still nervous about inflation. That is indicated by the spike in the Treasury, the two-year and the 10-year. They're at highs they haven't seen in over a year. The expectation now is we're looking at 7% mortgage interest rates again before the end of the year as a result of the bond yields. Traders are just saying, we got to have more money because of inflation. You're going to have to pay us more. The dollar ain't going to be worth as much. That's how that works, essentially. So the NASDAQ down 58 points, the Dow up today, 10 years slightly down from yesterday, but it crossed over the 4.7 mark, which again isn't good news for mortgage interest rates. The Dow's up 236, so a little bit of a rotation trade going on.