Recent History
Main articles: 1990s, History of the United States (since 1988), and History of Canada (1992–present)The End of the Cold War and the beginning of the era of sustained economic expansion coincided during the 1990s. On January 1, 1994 Canada, Mexico and the United States signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, creating the world's largest free trade area. In 2000, Vicente Fox became the first non-PRI candidate to win the Mexican presidency in over 70 years.
The optimism of the 1990s was shattered by the 9/11 attacks of 2001 on the United States, which prompted military intervention in Afghanistan, which Canada also participated in. Canada and Mexico did not support the United States's later move to invade Iraq.
Starting in the summer of 2007, a financial crisis in the United States eventually triggered a worldwide recession.
In 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first African American to be President of the United States. Two years later, Osama Bin Laden, perpetrator of 9/11, was found and killed. In December 2011, the Iraq War was declared formally over.
Read more about this topic: History Of North America
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“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!
There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)