light. look for the light. good message on a final night of james corden s show. that was hope, guys, for the future? yeah. a little bit of unity. all right. so let s start there. but there is this in the end. donald trump could not stop mike pence from testifying. his own former vice president appearing before the federal grand jury investigating january 6th. also, cnn live on the ground in ukraine after russian missiles killed at least 16 people across the country, including small children. this is the largest scale assault we have seen in more than a month. and the host of tomorrow night s white house correspondents dinner will join us live this hour, this morning, starts now. lots of developments this morning. this hour, three u.s. soldiers are dead and another injured after two apache helicopters collided in alaska. the army says they were flying back to base ever a training flight. abortion bans, fail to pass south carolina and nepz statehouses. the failur
gauge cooled last month hitting its lowest level in more than two years and the u.s. economy grew faster than estimates, expanding at an annual pace of 2% per quarter. the job market is resilient with unemployment claims reporting the biggest drop in 20 months. despite this optimistic news, inflation is still above the fed s 2% target. jerome powell reiterated the rate hike campaign is set to resume after a june pause. it s a short week on wall street. u.s. markets are closed tuesday for july 4th. after reopening we ll get minutes from the fed s june meeting, jobless claims and the critical june jobs report. an afternoon at a small town bar in new england turned to horror sunday. dozens of people were injured when an suv crashed into the looney bin bar and grill in laconia near hampshire. the car was involved in an accident with another vehicle when it careened into the bar. 14 people were taken to the hospital. none of the injuries are said
here s before the bell with christine romans. the stock market has shown resilience after that awful 2022 as we wrap up the first half of the year for wall street here. the nasdaq is up nearly 30% so far this year. that s the best first half since 1983. wall street also got some encouraging news on the inflation front. the fed s preferred inflation gauge cooled last month hitting its lowest level in more than two years. and the u.s. economy grew faster than estimates. expanding in an annual pace of 2% in the first quarter. the job market is still resilient with unemployment claims recording the biggest drop in 20 minutes. inflation is still above the fed s 2% target. and jerome powell said the rate hike campaign is set to resume later this year. after the opening, we ll get the minutes from the fed s june
talking about the health of the economy and whether we could see another hike in interest rates. with us now, cnn chief business correspondent christine romans. congress gets to talk to jerome powell, and i get you in this scenario. what is the answer? the fed inflation fight is not over and he s explaining why last week it paused in the rate hike campaign, but the pause will not last. the fed saying all fomc committee members think it will be appropriate to raise interest rates somewhat further by the end of the year. that s your money bite by the testimony and inflation pressures continue to run too high and it will be a long way to go to get inflation down to 2% and that s why markets are down this morning because the fed is promising more interest rate hikes ahead. there have been ten and then there was that pause and we have a meeting coming up in july where people think the fed will va to raise interest rates again. the job market is strong and the economy is growing at a moder
it down. it shows that the feds rate hike campaign is working. this pce price index, this is consumer inflation the fed likes to look at, grew 0.1% from february to march. that s good. that s a normal rate of inflation than some of the terrible numbers we have been seeing. when you look year over year, it s still too hot, up 4.2%. but that s down pretty dramatically. it was 4.6% last month, 5% the month so it s good to see that number coming down here. there is another number that came out, the employment cost index, a quarterfinal number. i know you covered this before. that shows that wages picked up in the quarter. so here is the split screen. wages are still rising. that s good, i mean, everybody wants to get a little more money in your paycheck. that s good for people but the fed is worried that is inflationary. on the one hand, the prices are cooling and that s showing the fed s medicine is working, but wages are still strong.