The monitoring arm, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, or O.D.I.H.R., sends long-term and short-term observation teams, often numbering in the hundreds of people, to elections throughout the states of the former Soviet Union.
Many organisations prefer to send long-term observers, who visit the country several months before polling day.
"A legally-binding climate deal would be the greatest single act for sending long-term clarity to the markets.
Printing more money to buy government debt, for instance, might send long-term bond yields higher rather than lower.What should policymakers do?
The persistent appetite for the perceived safety of Treasury bonds sent long-term government bond funds to an average gain of 26.9 percent.
Besides, even to suggest that the government was working on a fresh set of tax cuts and public-works programmes would send long-term interest rates skyward again.
A sell-off in the bond market sent long-term interest rates soaring, with 30-year fixed-rate mortgages up a percentage point since April.
Francis has been a key source in recent years behind a series of revelations about the covert unit that sent long-term spies to infiltrate and disrupt political groups for 40 years.
Those details are crucial, because a poorly designed or excessive stimulus package could send long-term interest rates higher, undoing the positive economic effects of new spending or tax cuts.
He believes anything that even smacked of a U-turn would result in a backlash from the bond markets that would send long-term interest rates soaring, killing off any hopes of recovery.
But the new administration made clear quickly that its highest priority would be to reduce the deficit, a stance that pleased the bond market and set off a move that sent long-term interest rates in 1993 to their lowest levels in more than 25 years.
