USA

USA - Is officially known as The United States of America. It is also sometimes known as U.S., USA, United States, Good Ole U.S. of A. and America . The USA is a North American country and located in central North America, between the North Pacific Ocean and North Atlantic Ocean, sharing borders with Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the North American continent, sharing borders with Canada to its east and Russia by way of the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is in the mid-North Pacific. The United States also possesses several territories, or insular areas, scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific.
The indigenous peoples of the U.S. mainland, including Alaska Natives, are thought to have migrated from Asia. They began arriving at least 12,000 and possibly as many as 40,000 years ago. Some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. After Europeans began settling the Americas, many millions of indigenous Americans died from epidemics of imported diseases such as smallpox.
Britain's American colonies broke with the mother country in 1776 and were recognized as the new nation of the United States of America following the Treaty of Paris in 1783. During the 19th and 20th centuries, 37 new states were added to the original 13 as the nation expanded across the North American continent and acquired a number of overseas possessions. In the 19th century, the United States acquired land from France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over states' rights and the expansion of the institution of slavery provoked the American Civil War of the 1860s. Buoyed by victories in World Wars I and II and the end of the Cold War in 1991, the US remains the world's most powerful nation state. The economy is marked by steady growth, low unemployment and inflation, and rapid advances in technology. The United States is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the largest national economy in the world, with an estimated 2008 Gross Domestic Product. US business firms enjoy greater flexibility than their counterparts in Western Europe and Japan in decisions to expand capital plant, to lay off surplus workers, and to develop new products. US Congress established a $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program in October 2008. The government used some of these funds to purchase equity in US banks and other industrial corporations. President Barack Obama has announced his intention to support an additional $825 billion fiscal stimulus package - two-thirds on additional spending and one-third on tax cuts - to create jobs and to help the economy recover.