MidDays with Gerard Gibert 2026-09-17

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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 (1:02)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to MidDays. SuperTalk Mississippi. I'm your host, Gerard Gibert, along with Rhino in the Alamedd Weld Studio, guiding you through the middle of your day with facts, fodder, and fine music. Morning there, Rhino, on this Friday Eve. There you go, baby, Friday Eve. We got a big old weekend set in Oxford coming up with Lane Kiffin coming back to the campus.

Where he was once a coach, now, of course, the head coach of LS&U. And he'll be coming back, and we got the mayor of Oxford, Mayor Robin Tannehill. He's going to be on the program at 10.35 today. Looking forward to that conversation. I got to ask you, Rhino, how many people they expect to be in Oxford? I'm seeing all kinds of crazy predictions. Have you seen this? 350,000? That's insane.

Where are they going to put all those people?

Rhino (2:11)

On top of each other.

Gerard Gibert (2:13)

I might need to leave after the show to get up there for the game at 6.30. And it's my understanding that the Department of Public Safety is going to have quite the presence for the game, keeping the folks safe and protecting them. And they're bringing in some reinforcements, right? I believe that's the plan from perhaps Louisiana. Got some law enforcement officers coming up in just around the area.

Rhino (2:42)

Louisiana and Alabama are pitching in.

Gerard Gibert (2:45)

Wow. That's incredible.

Rhino (2:47)

I think it's like specialized units, like maybe the horse units or something.

Gerard Gibert (2:51)

Okay.

Rhino (2:53)

Because you got to think, there aren't that many horse units across the southeast. So if you have a very large gathering of people where you need the officers to be a little elevated, to keep a lookout on a large crowd, you're probably going to have to call in some extras.

Gerard Gibert (3:06)

Well, and of course, the New Orleans Police Department accustomed to that with Mardi Gras. There's probably no other event in the country with so many people in the streets at a given point in time. So, yeah, they're trained in those duties, and they're expected to be on hand. So, wow, we got a bunch to get to today. Of course, we got the midterms coming at us really fast here. A couple of things before we dig into all the politics of the day.

This is a report from Wallet Hub.

And Wallet Hub is an organization that analyzes, surveys, studies, reports on lots of subject matter, lots of metrics and comparisons of states, cities, etc. Again, just across a range of issues that normally traditional-type media is not going to cover, not down to the survey level. Wallet Hub, and of course, most of it deals with the household in various communities, various states, the financial, various financial metrics about the households. And here's one they just released this morning concerning student debt. They did a survey. There's 1.7 trillion dollars of student debt outstanding. And Wallet Hub, by the way, they kind of describe themselves now that I think about it as a personal finance company. So they compared the 50 states in the District of Columbia recently across 12 key metrics concerning student debt.

I was shocked to find out that they ranked the great state of Mississippi in 2026 as the state with the most student debt. Little surprise at that. Now, here are the metrics, just so you know.

Average student debt, proportion of students with debt. So it's not just like, hey, how much do you owe and add it all up? Because clearly, we wouldn't rank top in that just because of our population of the states. A student debt as a percentage of income. And let me go back and do that again and tell you how we ranked in each of those categories. And of course, the combination of all those ranks is how we ended up topping the list, unfortunately, is having the most student debt. So average student debt, we're 21st. Proportion of students with debt, we're 18th. Here's the one that got us, Rhino. Student debt as a percentage of income, adjusted for the cost of living. So a lot of people say, well, yeah, our incomes aren't very high, but we also have a low cost of living. That's absolutely true. But in study after study after study, if you adjust things like student debt, things like per capita incomes, things like household income for the cost of living, we still unfortunately come out on the bottom. But student debt as a percentage of income, we're number one adjusted for the cost of living. That just means whatever you're paying, whatever you owe, and your debt service is as a percentage of the revenue, the income coming into your household, that percentage is the highest in the country. We're 25th in employment rate of population. So I think they're looking at that and saying, wait a second, you're borrowing a bunch of money to go to college, but that's not translating into employment. And that's why I suspect that's included in this metric. Percentage of student loans past due are in default. We're number one. I'm shocked at this. Availability of student jobs, third. Availability of paid internships, second. Grant growth, 25th. So that puts us as the state with the most student debt, according to the ranks in all those various categories. Interesting data. $1.7 trillion. That's a bunch of student debt. Speaking of student debt, what about the Fed yesterday? Raising rates by a quarter point. And this is what was predicted. Was it not right? Oh, all the prediction markets and the futures markets, of course, as well. And I believe the decision was unanimous, if I'm not mistaken, among the Fed governors, the Federal Open Market Committee is how it is described and entitled. And so that was already, I think, kind of baked into the markets, although there was a significant sell-off yesterday. The sell-off came, though, you know, again, you really got to be bored like I was.