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Byline: David Francis As violence rampages across northern Nigeria and the capital city of Abuja faces renewed terror threats, questions are being raised about the true motivation of Boko Haram, [...]

Byline: David Francis Earlier this month, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan was forced to move a large outdoor celebration marking the 51st anniversary of Nigeria's independence from British colonial rule from [...]

Byline: David Francis Blessing Dumo, a 30-year-old commander in the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, belies the stereotype of a Niger Delta militant. Mr. Dumo looks, talks, and acts like [...]

Byline: David Francis On Sept. 17, a popular Nigerian blogger named Linda Ikeji wrote that she was in possession of an hour-long tape of five students from Abia State University [...]

Byline: David R. Francis There's something missing in the Washington political scene - a genuine populist, a prominent politician persistently pointing out a decades-long drift of income and wealth to [...]

Byline: David R. Francis Before President Obama's State of the Union message Jan. 25, Social Security supporters were 'really scared,' as one Washington pundit put it. They worried that Mr. [...]

Byline: David R. Francis Baby boomers, the oldest just now reaching retirement age, can expect to receive inheritances equaling more than $8 trillion over their lifetime. It's a record intergenerational [...]

Byline: David R. Francis Congress is going to have to tackle rising health-care costs in Medicare and 'Obamacare.' House Republicans can try to repeal Obamacare or starve it for funds. [...]

Byline: David R. Francis The Great Recession has badly damaged the 'American dream' - the national ethos that everyone can move toward a richer and fuller life according to their [...]

Byline: David Francis Are American businesspeople less honest than they used to be? An actual level of shady and dishonest practices is probably impossible to measure. Two recent examples: 1. [...]

Byline: David R. Francis The Federal Reserve is under attack - again. If 2010 seemed tough for the central bank, 2011 holds the prospect of even more criticism. That's because [...]

Byline: David R. Francis The tax deal negotiated by President Obama and the Republican congressional leadership has been called a 'stealth stimulus package.' By maintaining all the Bush tax cuts, [...]

Byline: David R. Francis It's not easy being a banker these days. In some European countries, they're the target of street demonstrators who blame them for the financial crisis and [...]

Byline: David R. Francis America is whipping itself into a frenzy because of debt. Listen to the chairmen of President Obama's bipartisan fiscal commission and other deficit-cutters and you're likely [...]

Byline: David R. Francis Does America face a 'lost decade,' such as Japan suffered in the 1990s? After all, Japan in that decade saw a massive real estate price bubble [...]

Byline: David R. Francis Why is it that economists don't understand - at a deep and scientific level - how the economy works? Two centuries after Adam Smith's 'Wealth of [...]

Byline: David R. Francis One in 10 South Americans - about 38 million people - escaped poverty during the past decade. That's remarkable progress by any measure. Contrast that with [...]

Byline: David Francis On a recent patrol convoy that lumbered across the barren, rocky fields of Malajat, an area located on flatlands on the eastern outskirts of Kandahar City, Afghanistan, [...]

Byline: David R. Francis The Great Recession has had many victims, including the stock market, housing, and the jobs market. There's also a lesser-known casualty, yet one important to American [...]

Byline: David R. Francis The United States spends far more on health care than any other nation. Those high costs pinch American consumers, but they're a boon to providers of [...]

Byline: David R. Francis The world needs new rules to keep nations from manipulating their currencies to get an export trade advantage. If rules don't get written, today's escalating trade [...]

Byline: David Francis For the past decade, the Taliban has held firm control over the small farming village of Malajat, located on the green flatland along the eastern outskirts of [...]

Byline: David R. Francis Everybody knows the rich are getting richer, but why they're getting richer remains something of a mystery. Is the system biased? The shift of income to [...]

Byline: David R. Francis To promote its exports, China has been cheating economically by keeping the value of its yuan artificially low. For years this has made Chinese goods relatively [...]

Byline: David R. Francis Opinion polls find that the public has far more confidence and trust in small business than in Congress - around 59 percent versus about 7 percent. [...]

Byline: David R. Francis The United States faces a prolonged 'jobless recovery' - its third such flabby recovery and perhaps its weakest yet in terms of employment growth. After the [...]

Byline: David R. Francis A microsecond - a millionth of a second - is all it takes superfast computers to trade New York Stock Exchange-listed stocks on any of nine [...]

Byline: David R. Francis 'Pouting pundits of pessimism.' Is that what those many economic forecasters, warning of a double-dip recession and deflation, amount to? Brian Wesbury, chief economist of First [...]

Byline: David R. Francis When the Puritans sailed from England in the 1630s to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony, they imposed a ban on 'games of chance.' For a short [...]

Byline: David R. Francis Suppose the US Supreme Court largely upholds Arizona's tough immigration law and, as a result, Arizona police pick up an extra 5,000 or 10,000 unlawful immigrants [...]

Byline: David R. Francis Americans aren't paying nearly enough federal taxes to afford the government they have. To bring the budget closer to balance, Congress will have to raise taxes, [...]

Byline: David R. Francis So far, the millionaires in the US Senate (probably a majority) have not recused themselves from considering estate tax legislation that could, depending on how they [...]

Byline: David R. Francis The Social Security system today faces a threat greater than the drive for partial privatization by George W. Bush. 'That's not hyperbolic,' says Nancy Altman, codirector [...]

Byline: David R. Francis Washington's 'twin deficit' problem - a huge jobs deficit and a massive budget deficit - poses challenges never before faced by the United States. And the [...]

Byline: David R. Francis With last month's sweeping financial reform bill, Congress has finally moved to tame runaway executive pay. Sort of. It says shareholders must vote on a CEO's [...]

Byline: David R. Francis What asset has appreciated more than 300 percent since 2000? It's not US stocks. The Standard & Poor's 500 index is down more than 20 percent [...]

Byline: David R. Francis It's bigger than Wal-Mart, employs more people than the United States Post Office, and far outspends all its competitors. It's the US Department of Defense. Next [...]

Byline: David R. Francis The oil that's flooded into the Gulf of Mexico has created big concerns about the environmental and economic damage. Another serious outcome has gotten far less [...]

Byline: David R. Francis You won't get much debate in Washington or elsewhere if you say the United States must at some point seriously reduce its ballooning budget deficit. Perhaps [...]

Byline: David R. Francis Year after year, relatively well-to-do New Yorkers subsidize the poorer citizens of Mississippi through the federal system of taxes and disbursement. There's little complaining. No 'tea [...]

Byline: David R. Francis In Britain, it's called the 'Robin Hood Tax,' a proposed levy on banks and other financial institutions to boost government revenues. In the United States, a [...]

Byline: David R. Francis Arizona has a good case for its tough new law aimed at shrinking the number of illegal immigrants in the state. One might not think so, [...]

Byline: David R. Francis When the risky high-wire acts of Wall Street firms got them into life-threatening danger, Washington spread out a big and expensive safety net. Some firms failed, [...]

Byline: David Francis The German parliament passed an unpopular Greek bailout today, paving the way for a $141 billion financial rescue of the debt-plagued Mediterranean country by the European Union [...]

Byline: David R. Francis "When you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," presidential candidate Barack Obama famously told an Ohio man, soon dubbed "Joe the Plumber." With passage […]

Byline: David Charles Francis The Greek debt crisis may be turning into a European Central Bank crisis. As the European Central Bank (ECB) continues to loan money to keep Greece [...]

Byline: David R. Francis Before the great recession, some people pooh-poohed government jobs. Who wanted stodgy when the private sector had go-go growth? Why stick with safe when you could [...]

Byline: David Charles Francis Not so fast, Germany replied to Greece's request today for a massive bailout. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has long resisted monetary support for the indebted [...]

Byline: David R. Francis When some developing nations can't create enough new jobs for rapidly growing populations, they export people. Younger workers in places like Haiti, Mexico, the Philippines, and [...]

Byline: David Francis Weekend optimism that the ash cloud from a volcano in Iceland was dissipating, faded Monday as thousands of flights around Europe remained grounded today, stranding millions of [...]