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The Fed starts a two-day meeting Tuesday. And while Ben Bernanke isn't expected to change rates, a lot is on the line.

You probably have a sense the Fed is super important and powerful, but here's something you probably don't know: The Fed doesn't print money.

Yes, that's right. Despite all the chatter on the campaign trail (hello, Ron Paul) and on cable TV, the Fed is actually not in the business of printing money.

In America, the actual, physical printing presses are owned and operated by the Treasury Department...not the Fed.

A lot of people are confused about this. That's probably because the Fed does control the money supply. But "money supply' is not the same as actual physical dollars — and yet another reason why economics is known as "the dismal science".

The money supply equals the amount of physical cash plus the amount of credit circulating throughout the economy, which is where the Fed comes in a very big way.

Think of the

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President Obama is set to give his third State of the Union address Tuesday night before a captive Congress and nation.

In an election year, this is his chance to "dominate the entire political discourse for an entire moment," says Yahoo!'s Washington Bureau Chief David Chalian. "Remember the State of the Union of the re-election year for a president is always sort of the big campaign speech of the year for them…. [Obama] has a chance to use this speech to sort of crowd out all the other noise that has been out there about him coming from the Republicans."

For a President with average approval ratings below 50% for the majority of his term, this speech is a very big moment for him. Obama's approval ratings for his third year in office averaged 44%, down from 47% his second year and much lower than his first year which averaged a 57% average approval rating, according to Gallup.

Obama on Saturday gave the country a glimpse of what he