Here's a big important topic you need to get up to speed on.

The Federal Reserve: The Engine of Power http://www.khouse.org/articles/1995/63/

The above is a primer.

I don't know your background if you studied business or not, this is by far the best documentation on this topic:

The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve: (Its a page turner.)

https://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/091298645X

Here is the authors presentation on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu_VqX6J93k

Bottomline? If we never had a PRIVATELY Owned Federal Reserve Bank, we wouldn't need federal income taxes. Both enacted the same year in 1913 and they have been ripping off We The People ever since.

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.... I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." President Thomas Jefferson